LO
BfiflBR
I
Presented to the
LIBRARY of the
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
by
PROFESSOR PETER HEYWORTH
THE
OXFORD MUSEUM
THE
OXFORD MUSEUM
BY
HENRY W. ACLAND, M.D.
AND
JOHN RUSKIN, M.A.
HONORARY STUDENTS OF CHRIST CHURCH
From original Edition, 1859. With Additions in 1893
GEORGE ALLEN
LONDON AND ORPINGTON
1893
HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE TO NEW EDITION . . . . . vii
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION xxvii
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION xxix
REMARKS ADDRESSED TO A MEETING OF ARCHITEC-
TURAL SOCIETIES AT OXFORD. BY DR. ACL AND,
1858 1
LETTER FROM MR. RFSKIN, No. 1 . . .43
„ „ No. 2 .... 60
LETTER FROM PROFESSOR PHILLIPS .... 91
NOTES
I. ON STATUES IN THE MUSEUM .... 102
II. ON THE IRISH WORKMEN 104
III. ON CONTRIBUTORS TO THE SCULPTURE . . 110
IV. MR. WOODWARD in
ILLUSTRATIONS
FERN CAPITAL IN CENTRAL AREA . . Frontispiece
PROFESSOR RUSKIN AND SIR HENRY ACLAND,
BABT tofacexxv
SKETCH OF IRON SPANDREL . . . . .89
PLAN OF GROUND FLOOR OF THE MUSEUM, 1893 at end
PREFACE TO REPRINT OF
THE OXFORD MUSEUM, i893
rpHIRTY-FOUR years have elapsed since
the few pages which follow have been out
of print in their present form.
A third edition of the little volume was
published in 1861 by an editor, at a time when
I was deeply engaged and unable to attend to
any unnecessary work. After it had been
printed I was much concerned to find that
Mr. Ruskin's Letters had been omitted, being
informed that they were to be separately
published. Since that time I have taken no
further interest in issues of the volume, for
its value mainly depended on the Address-
viii Preface to Reprint of
being accompanied by Mr. Ruskin's Letters,
and the Letters by the Address. I have been
repeatedly pressed of late years to reissue
them together. For this and for other reasons
I consent. These reasons are closely related
to the state of Science and of Art in the middle
of this century, and specially to Mr. Ruskin's
connexion with the advance of modern Thought
and Education. Now that the building, in-
complete as it still is, is devoted to the actual
work of Science, the history of its Art is
practically forgotten. The Address was given
in 1858, by their desire, to Architectural
Societies while the Museum was still in
course of erection. There were two reasons
why the building excited their attention.
The one, a general interest in the progress
and development of Scientific Education in the
old University.
The other, interest in the manner in which
the edifice was being erected, and in the
persons who were concerned therein.
' The Oxford Museum ' ix
It was widely known that the object, and
the method of carrying it out, were then
violently opposed in the University. Every
grant was carried in Convocation by a
narrow majority. That for the gas-pipes for
lighting the Court, for instance, was carried.
That for the burners was lost by two. It is
often supposed that this was chiefly owing
to a dominant theological party. This was
not the fact. It is true that one Vice-
Chancellor, a religious leader, gave as the
reason of his opposition that Science tends to
Infidelity — a strange argument for a believer in
a Creator. But it is also true that Dr. Pusey,
then, except Mr. Newman, perhaps the greatest
power in the University, replying to a young
teacher of science, who asked whether it was
to be counted a danger and an evil if he sought
faithfully to discharge tke duty committed to
his care, said : ( The desire to acquire scientific
knowledge and the power to attain it are alike
the gift of God, and are to be used as such.
x Preface to Reprint of
While I see you reverently acting in this
sense you may rely on my help, whenever I
can give it/ Ten years afterwards, the final
vote in Convocation for the Museum would
have been lost but for Dr. Pusey and his
friends, who supported Dr. Cotton, the then
Vice-Chancellor, when he took a wider and
truer view of man and of truth than his
predecessor.
When, at the competition for designs, two
were selected — one Gothic, by Sir Thomas
Dean and Mr. Woodward, one Renaissance,
by Mr. Barry — Mr. Ruskin strongly advocated
the Gothic, not so much perhaps for the
actual design, as for the relative value of
Gothic Architecture. It was quite understood
that no building could be satisfactorily com-
pleted for the proposed amount, and provide
what the several Professors even at that time
required. Economy, not completeness, was
practically the first object with even the
majority. One condition, therefore, with those
' The Oxford Museum J xi
who were in earnest, was an Architecture which
readily lent itself to extension in any direction,
as enlargement was called for. Now this was
essentially the character of every period of
good Gothic. The actual design attracted
much attention, more even than the contest
whether modern Science should really find a
worthy dwelling-place in Oxford. That point
was now settled. Henceforward it was with
the Science workers a matter of care that the
building should be rapidly completed, and
fitted for scientific work in the most practical
manner. But Mr. Ruskin and others felt
heartily that a larger debt than that was due
to the Scientific study of Nature. f Nature/
said Sir Thomas Brown, ( is the Art of God/
The University owed both to the Nation and
to the student of Nature, however simple and
self-denying his ways, that his surroundings
should be at least as decent and as convenient
for his studies as are the Libraries to the
student of Letters, the Common Room or the
xii Preface to Reprint of
College Halls to the recreation of the scholars.
Once on a time any place was good enough for
a Medical Student. The neglect of him by
Governments was a proverb. What was the
result ? A surgeon of note was shown to me
when I entered my profession, as the one man
strong enough to carry away a body under
each arm from a graveyard, for the cbody
snatchers' at a ' Resurrection party/ When
for the first time I opened the door of a
dissecting-room, a stalwart porter in blue
apron, shirt sleeves tucked up, threw towards
the lofty skylight a black and putrid human
head, and, kicking out his foot in jest, called
out to the students : ( Who wants a kick ? ' and
caught his football in his hands. In so far
as surroundings in work can influence the
tone of those who enter them, Ruskin and
his friends helped to make association of this
kind impossible, and students of medicine
would not now tolerate them. They are
banished for ever.
' The Oxford Museum ' xiii
I must not say more on this point, for
Ruskin's Letters, now happily republished here,
together with the slight sketch in the Address
to which they refer, say that which I could
never say. The studies of the Museum are
the study of the Universe in a National Uni-
versity ; of Nature in its Unity, and in its
several component parts, in its history, in its
relation to her Maker and to Man. Mr. Ruskin
was worthily supported by the then young
artists who as Pre-Raphaelite Brothers pre-
sently attained their great reputation, as well
as by Mr. Watts and Mr. Woolner and others.
I must not here attempt to describe how this
happened, or what they did. They gathered
with enthusiasm round Ruskin and Woodward.
Dante Rossetti, Morris, Alexander Munro,
Millais, Holman Hunt, Pollen, Woolner,
aided every step with the deepest interest.
Several painted — unpaid — historical designs on
the large roof of the Union Library which
Woodward built. Munro executed four of the
xiv Preface to Reprint of
five statues, most generously most helpfully
given by Her Gracious Majesty. Under the
inspiration of these Artists the workmen
designed capitals illustrating the natural orders
of plants. Friends gave the polished shafts,
more than one hundred in number, to illustrate
British Rocks : Ruskin, three hundred pounds
to improve the work of one set of windows.
The University was not asked to contribute
one of these. Love of Art, Love of Nature,
Love of Science, Love of working-men, in their
several bearings, practical, poetical, heart-
lifting, animated all concerned. As I look
back over the thirty-nine years, I feel that
Ruskin, Woodward and Deane were the centre
of all. Much might (and one day should) be
said of the direction of work and thought
when the Museum, though incomplete both for
Science and for Art, became, unfinished as it
was, the chief Laboratory of the University
for instruction and research. It has had a
chequered career, in which there are, and
' The Oxford Museum ' xv
must be, for joy and for hope, some things
to regret.
Unwilling as I am to add one mournful touch
to a story of effort and success, it would be
unjust to Mr. Ruskin and unfair to the Museum
and my readers not to record here how the
Museum became, some twenty years afterwards,
the cause of Mr. Ruskin's resignation, and of
his withdrawal from Oxford. In 1881 Professor
Rolleston, who had been the first Professor of
Anatomy and Physiology after the Museum was
erected, — a man of rare acquirements, noble
heart, and indomitable energy, — was taken
from us. We had long felt that his Professor-
ship, important as its establishment had been
in its first form, embraced a range of biological
subjects too great for any man in the rapid
growth of Science. It was therefore on his death
divided into a Chair of Anatomy and a Chair
of Physiology. To the former Chair Rolleston's
favourite pupil Moseley, whom he had trained,
and for whom with true insight he had obtained
xvi Preface to Reprint of
the post of Naturalist to H. M. S. Challenger,
was appointed ; to the latter, Dr. Burdon-
Sanderson, already famous for the breadth and
depth of his biological knowledge, normal and
abnormal, and specially of medicine, scientific
and pathological. The University voted at
once a large sum for the construction of
Physiological Laboratories on Dr. Sanderson's
designs. Afterwards, when a grant of £500
a year was proposed to Convocation for carry-
ing on the work in them, a violent concerted
opposition was organized : non-residents were
brought up from all parts of the country,
and a scene ensued in the Sheldonian Theatre
such as in the last half century has but
once before been witnessed. The attack was
led with intense earnestness by the late
Professor Freeman. The objection was the
practical recognition of vivisection, in which
Professor Sanderson was a famous expert,
and author of an important manual thereon.
The grant was carried. Mr. Ruskin resigned
1 The Oxford Museum ' xvii
his Professorship by a formal letter to the Vice-
Chancellor.
This is not the place to enter upon the
merits of experimental researches on living
beings except in relation to Mr. Ruskin.
Few probably would now doubt that the time
was already past for taking the course which
he felt to be his duty. The Professor had been
appointed. His laboratories had been erected.
To make the work, judged by him to be right,
impossible was hopelessly illogical. Moreover,
a large part of physiological instruction does
not involve fresh experiments on living ani-
mals, and none can be performed in England
before students without special license granted
under the Act of Parliament. But the
sad fact of Mr. Huskies decision remains.
How did it happen ? Had he not till now
been aware that much of modern Physiology
rested upon experiment on animals while their
structures, marvellous and complex, were
capable of being observed in action? or was
B
xviii Preface to Reprint of
it that his sympathetic character was stirred
by sudden impulse, so that he refused, as a
Member of the University, to be personally
responsible for that which his whole nature
abhorred ? Is he wholly wrong ? The temper,
perhaps, of the age replies, wholly. His voice
for controversy is now silent. I have neither
his speech nor his pen. But I write now at
Brantwood, in the Holy Land, as it has been
called, of Wordsworth; and looking back on
the history of Ruskin's life and character, I
am not surprised.
It is a great error, however, to think of
Ruskin as without scientific insight. He might
have written Wordsworth's pregnant lines :
'Yet do I exult,
Casting reserve away, exult to see
An intellectual mastery exercised
O'er the blind elements ; a purpose given,
A perseverance fed ; almost a soul
Imparted to brute matter. I rejoice
Measuring the force of those gigantic powers
That, by the thinking mind, have been compelled
To serve the will of feeble-bodied Man.'
'The Oxford Museum* xix
Still more would Ruskin have been disposed
to sing :
1 To every Form of being is assigned
An active principle : however removed
From sense and observation it subsists
In all things, in all natures, in the stars
Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds,
In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,
The moving waters, and the invisible air.
Whate'er exists hath properties that spread
Beyond itself, communicating good,
A simple blessing, or with evil mixed.
Spirit that knows no insulated spot,
No chasm, no solitude : from link to link
It circulates, the soul of all the worlds.
This is the freedom of the Universe,
Unfolded still the more, more visible
The more we know.'
We can imagine Ruskin saying with Words-
worth : c The poet . . . converses with general
nature^ with affections akin to those which
through labour and length of time the man of
science has raised up in himself^ by conversing
with those particular parts of Nature which
are the objects of his studies/
But the whole nature of Ruskin resists the
limited study of Nature which takes a part for
xx Preface to Reprint of
the whole, which studies the material structure
of Man, forgetting the higher aspirations and
properties for which that structure seems to
exist on earth — to bring him into communion
with the Infinite — and through the Infinite to
the love of all things living with Man or for him.
The affection which burns within him for
the lowliest of men, he extends in their degree
to all creatures that live and feel, while he
dwells with keenest insight on the beauty
and action and structure of all created things,
bringing in more than one direction a vigour
of language and of thought scarce ever rivalled,
never surpassed.
I was grieved (though I am aware many do
not agree with me), in relation to the higher
appreciation of Nature, when it was decided
not to attach portions of the Botanical
Gardens to the precincts of the Museum,
bringing the living flora to illustrate and be
illustrated by the extinct. I regretted also
that the opportunity was lost for making
'The Oxford Museum' xxi
suitable arrangements, in the eighty acres then
purchased^ for the study of such animals,
whether in health or disease, as might main-
tain a constant interest and delight in Life
in action, in as many forms as could be
conveniently displayed1. Life in action, with
the habits thereto pertaining, is a study as
worthy as is the machinery which makes, pre-
serves, and brings it to a close. It is a fault
in most museums that only the mechanism of
life and not its living actions are displayed.
Sir William Flower to some extent, and as far
perhaps as London needs, has remedied this.
These general thoughts may seem strange
to those in Oxford who, from imperfect
1 In the Appendix the Laboratories rebuilt or added
to the Museum since its first erection are shown on a
ground plan, namely, for the Departments of Physics, of
Chemistry, of Physiology, of Comparative Anatomy, of
Human Anatomy, of Geology, besides the Pitt-Rivers
Museum and its work-rooms, and the Astronomical
Observatory. More space is required, notably for the
Radcliffe Library, a large Lecture Room, and the Hope
Collections. The University can provide as many acres
as from time to time are needed without detriment to
the Parks.
xxii Preface to Reprint of
knowledge, desire to change the Museum into
a so-called ( medical school/ They perhaps
have not reflected on the loss that they will
inflict on the Profession of Medicine if they
succeed. Forty years ago it was hoped
to add to the wide Philosophical, Historical,
Theological life of the old University the means
for similar study of the material Universe
considered alike in its Unity and in its special
parts. It was felt this would harmonize with,
and supply, the missing link in the aims of the
old education. The opportunities were to be
open to all, for whatever walk in life destined.
Adapt it only to one Profession such as Medi-
cine, you rob all others of the larger oppor-
tunity, and — which is even worse — persuade
future Oxford graduates that Medicine has no
relation to Science as a whole; that it is a
specialism, grounded on itself alone, and that
the essence of its education is to prepare by
schedules for passing examinations. No greater
educational fallacy can exist. To give colour
'The Oxford Museum' xxiii
to it is a cruelty to all our youth. Our best
students already feel this to be so. The foun-
dation by them of the Robert Boyle Lecture is a
proof. Wider views are held by the best thinkers,
even for our Elementary and Government
Schools. The conception is a relic of days of
ignorance. The function of the Oxford Museum
towards Medicine is to train good scientific
observers and thinkers, to become observers and
thinkers in pathological and therapeutic and
preventive processes. They will then, I hope,
enter the vast field of disease which is seen in the
great hospitals of the Metropolis, or other centres
of large and diversely occupied populations, as
broadly educated and really thoughtful men.
May the reader forgive these truisms, re-
peated after fifty years, in old age, but not
without need ! The conception of Education
in the last few years has been greatly extended
among the masses ; their aims are no doubt in
several respects more technical, but also more
philosophical and literary. In the North of
xxiv . Preface to Reprint of
England and in Scotland, a miner or a ( mill-
hand5 may be now heard discussing Butler's
Analogy, George Eliot, or Herbert Spencer, as
they do portions of Roscoe, Tait, and Huxley.
Biology, normal and abnormal, in its widest
relations, is not absent from the Higher Schools
or Colleges for young women, some of whom
so trained will spend active lives in the
administration of Hospitals and Workhouses
with gifts intellectual and personal unknown
till now. There is a great change in the
influence of the Universities, whether for
abstract or applied Science, whether theoretical
or practical. The effects of University Exten-
sion and of the Evening Classes under the New
Code of Education on the national character
of the masses can hardly as yet be foreseen.
They have a manifest bearing also on the
future of the deeper and higher education of
the professional classes. To train well-educated
men to be Science Teachers under County
Councils and in Secondary Schools throughout
Published by iieorge All? n. 15 6. Charing J.r oss R •-. a .1 L >n Ion.
1 The Oxford Museum ' xxv
the Country, is an important and much needed
function for Oxford. It will, moreover, open
prospects for the highly-trained Graduates
through the Natural Science Honour School,
who are already increasing in number^ and are
beginning to do much original work in the
several Science Laboratories.
More words from me are now unnecessary.
I conclude therefore by here recording a
message given me to-day at Brantwood by
Mr. Ruskin, when he knew that the following
Address on the Oxford Museum was to be
again published, together with his Letters,
after a separation of thirty years.
' Say to my friends in the Oxford
Museum from me, May God Uess the
reverent and earnest study of Nature
and of Man, to His glory, to the better
teaching of the Future, to the benefit of
bur Country, and to the good of all
Mankind.'
JOHN RUSKIN.
BRANTWOOD, CONISTON,
August 14, 1893.
xxvi Preface to Reprint
These pregnant words from the veteran
friend of the Institute for the study of Nature
in Oxford, are commended to the generations
who will there use the opportunities, and
advance the means, which he earnestly helped
for many years to obtain for them.
HENRY W. ACLAND.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
1860
HP HE Oxford Museum slowly approaches
completion. The building will shortly
sink into insignificance when compared to the
contents it will display, and the minds it
will mould.
The edifice will, however, stand as a record
of loving labour, bestowed by a pure and
refined artistic intelligence. It had the
advantage of strong, but not unanimous,
sympathy. It had not the command of an
unlimited exchequer.
Now its real work begins; we may hope
that the country will year by year feel more
clearly the value of its scientific training, when
engrafted in its due measure into the general
education of the Old University.
xxviii Preface to the Second Edition
The present edition gives the subjects of
most of the carvings, the localities of the
geological strata illustrated by the shafts,, lists
of the statues erected, and of the statues which
are yet desired.
To the original remarks, at the expense, it is
true, of chronological accuracy, there have now
been added, here and there, descriptions which
correspond to the progress of the building.
This seemed preferable to retaining statements
now inapplicable.
H. W. A.
OXFORD,
June 15, 1860.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
following pages contain the substance
of some remarks which were made to the
members of the Architectural Societies, at their
request, that met in Oxford in the summer of
last year. Pressing duties have hindered me
till now from committing to paper, as nearly
as my memory serves me, the matter of what
was then said. I am induced, however, thus
tardily to comply with a request made by
various persons, that these remarks should be
printed, because visitors in Oxford frequently
seek information similar to that which it was
my aim then to furnish.
It is, moreover, imperative on me to give
the utmost publicity I can to the letters which
Mr. Ruskin has addressed to me, the first in
xxx Preface to the First Edition
June last, and the second in January of this
year, when I informed him I was about to print
these remarks. It may seem presumptuous
that I should couple my own name with his
in a question which is partly one of Art;
but we both feel pleasure in recording that,
when fellow-undergraduates at Christ Church,
we sketched together; and that, after a lapse
of twenty years, we received on the same day
the high distinction of an Honorary Student-
ship ; because, though following divergent
paths, we have honestly and laboriously culti-
vated the Arts which we respectively profess.
To the intercourse on Art, and many kindred
subjects, which for more than twenty years I
have had with Dr. Liddell, the present Dean of
Christ Church, with John Ruskin, Charles
Newton, and George Richmond, I owe many
happy hours of rest in the midst of happy
labour, and am little disposed to forego the
right to seek recreation in this or any other
reasonable manner, because I am a Physician.
Preface to the First Edition xxxi
On the contrary, I here declare that, though
a man may be seduced from his duty, to his
after misery, by any other absorbing interest,
I yet believe that frequent intercourse with
men engaged in other intellectual pursuits, is,
in my profession at least, almost necessary to
form a complete professional mind. I appeal
to History in confirmation.
But, on the other side, I should be deeply
pained, if in consequence of the interest I
profess in the Art of the Oxford Museum, it
were supposed by any whose opinion I value,
either that I consider Art a subject on which
amateurs can have perfect judgement, or that
it is a matter which a Physician can seriously
pursue. Yet I am of opinion that it is the
duty of all persons who can help true-
hearted and earnest Artists in these days, to
aid in protecting them against unjust depre-
ciation in efforts which, from many causes in
this century and in our country, are neces-
sarily, among the best men, tentative. Many
xxxii Preface to the First Edition
have yet to learn the apparently simple truth,
that to an Artist his Art is his means of proba-
tion in this life; and that, whatever it may
have of frivolity to us, to him it is as the two
or the five talents, to be accounted for here-
after. I might say much on this point, for
the full scope of the word Art seems by some
to be even now unrecognised. Before the
period of printing, Art was the largest mode
of permanently recording human thought; it
was spoken in every epoch, in all countries,
and delivered in almost every material. In
buildings, on medals and coins, in porcelain
and earthenware, on wood, ivory, parchment,
paper and canvas, the graver or the pencil has
recorded the ideas of every form of society, of
every variety of race and of every character.
What wonder that the Artist is jealous of his
craft, and proud of his brotherhood ? But
as I hope that the time draws nigh when
the professorial staff of Oxford will include
a Professor of Art, I had better desist, and
Preface to the First Edition xxxiii
leave the matter in his hands. With the
Art of this building, at all events, I have
nothing whatever to do, except earnestly to
aid in giving fair play and full opportunity
to the eminently skilful persons, Deane and
Woodward, who are now executing the work.
For me and my fellow-teachers there, it is a
place of other work altogether ; and were it not
that, as a Professor, I owe duty in this thing to
the University, as a Physician, I might regret
every moment I had ever expended in aiding
the architects in the Art part of their under-
taking. In the department of Natural Science
and of Medicine there is far too much yet to
be done in this place, to allow any one, who
is connected with them and has a choice in the
matter, either time or energy for other occu-
pations, unless by change they bring him the
rest he needs. Like all other ancient things,
Medicine is undergoing a stern cross-exami-
nation; it is learning more and more that,
without depending wholly on positive science
c
xxxiv Preface to the First Edition
for its practical Art, — a thing which never can
be, — it can no longer go on without every aid
that science can afford; and therefore its dis-
ciples will all welcome such a building as is
the subject of this Lecture, because it bids
fair in a few years to disseminate widely,
among a class of influential persons not hitherto
reached, a knowledge of physiological truth
and the truths of nature in general : because
also it will help to keep before many of our
most cultivated minds and our most influential
thinkers, the principles of sanitary knowledge
in all its branches. I may not here dilate on
this great national question ; but they who look
ahead will see, without aid from my pen, what
mutual benefits will accrue from a closer union
of the Sciences at the root of Medicine with the
old Universities ; and will further perceive that
for the well-being of those very Sciences, the
Practical Art which is in one sense their highest
goal, must live, and make itself heard in its own
peculiar notes, and strange, unwritten speech.
Preface to the First Edition xxxv
I must not, however, allow myself now to
describe the full scope and prospects of an edu-
cational institution, such as this Museum ; and
yet I cannot bring to a close a preface already
too long for a description which is too short,
without repeating words which I ventured to
use ten years ago * on this subject : —
'With respect to the proposal to add some
study of the fundamental arrangements of the
natural world to the general education of the
place, I fear that if we do not add it, we may
live to see, what would be a great national
evil, such knowledge substituted for our pre-
sent system/
The addition has been made; the substitu-
tion is, I hope, averted. The further my
observation has extended, the more satisfied I
am that no knowledge of things will supply the
place of the early study of Letters — 'literae
1 See page 39 of ' Eemarks on the Extension of Educa-
tion in the University of Oxford.' Oxford : J. H. Parker.
1848.
C 2
xxxvi Preface to the First Edition
humaniores/ Recent changes in the French
Universities fully confirm this opinion. I do
not doubt the value of any honest mental
labour. Indeed, since the material working
of the Creator has been so far displayed to
our gaze, it is both dangerous and full of
impiety to resist its ennobling influence, even
on the ground that His moral work is greater.
But notwithstanding this, the study of lan-
guage, of history, and of the thoughts of great
men, which they exhibit, seems to be almost
necessary (as far as learning is necessary at
all) for disciplining the heart, for elevating the
soul, and for preparing the way for the growth
in the young, of their personal spiritual life :
while, on the other side, the best corrective
to pedantry in scholarship, and to conceit in
mental philosophy, is the study of the facts and
laws exhibited by Natural Science.
OXFORD,
Feb. 1, 1859.
THE OXFOBD MUSEUM
TTTHEN a critic in Art approaches an
architectural edifice, he asks, first, to
what uses is this building destined ? — next,
how far does it in a skilful manner inter-
weave beauty with convenience of arrange-
ment ? — and how far, subjected to the imposed
conditions of climate, site, and accessibility
of materials, does it express the object for
which it was intended?
You, therefore, who come as critics, ask
three things, and in answer, I will endeavour
to state: —
i st. The circumstances which in the history
of Oxford made this effort for enlarging her
means of education necessary.
2ndly. The objects which those members of
2 Necessity for Extended Education
the University who for many years advocated
this design have steadily kept in view.
3rdly. The way in which the Architects
have performed the task assigned to them.
In other words, it is my duty to relate why
extension of our buildings was necessary;
what is the object of that extension ; and
what was the spirit in which the required
building has been erected.
FIRST, then, as to the causes which called
for extension of the national education at
Oxford in the direction of Natural Science.
These must be briefly stated.
The great tide of human thought had set
for centuries, and down even to the close of
the Middle Ages, chiefly in the direction
of speculative reasoning, poetry, or history.
Many circumstances in the condition of the
world tended to repress the outbreak of in-
quiring and eager interest in external Nature,
which about the time of the discovery of the
Narrow-mindedness in Studies 3
New World dawned upon all the educated
part of mankind. It is not other than both
remarkable and humiliating, that some of those
who studied and taught the mental science
of Aristotle, or the speculative dogmas of the
schoolmen, should have wholly forgotten the
successful energy which Aristotle and Galen,
in the very dawn of literature, had expended
on investigating the laws of organic life. It
is probable, indeed, that the very condition
of the Church in the Middle Ages, which led
men to study the Bible less and value their
own fancies more, did, in fact, close their eyes
to the astonishing revelations of the unwritten
as well as of the written Word of God.
Oxford, fthe ancient seat of learning,' was
not exempt from this intellectual one-sidedness.
It chiefly cultivated classic lore, and pursued
the metaphysical notions of the schoolmen;
even these were not always taught in the
far-seeing spirit of true philosophy. It has
4 Slow Growth of Wider Studies
taken some centuries from the epoch of Roger
Bacon, followed here by Boyle, Harvey, Lin-
acre, and Sydenham, besides nearly 200 years
of unbroken publication of the Royal Society's
Transactions, to persuade this great English
University to engraft, as a substantial part of
the education of her youth, any knowledge of
the great material design of which the Supreme
Master- Worker has made us a constituent part.
cThe study of mankind/ indeed, was fMan';
but in Oxford it was Man viewed apart from
all those external circumstances and conditions
by which his probation on earth was made by
his Maker possible, and through whose agency,
for good or evil, his life here, and preparation
for life hereafter, were ordained.
Seeing, then, all these things, many here
in Oxford, not so much by concert, as by
that strange unanimity which comes to some
subjects in the fulness of their time, felt as
by an instinct, that they might not rest until
Yearning for Material Knowledge 5
means for rightly studying what is vouchsafed
for man to know of this universe were accorded
to the youth committed to their care, and to
themselves. From such causes, and from so deep
convictions, has arisen the Oxford Museum.
Nor was the present an inappropriate or
unexpected time for a work conceived in this
temper. Oxford possessed more than the
current knowledge of the day; and the light
which had been brought so multifariously to
bear on Nature, by many great minds in
Europe, from Bacon to Cuvier, had been
specially imparted to us in the first half of
this century. Partly by oral instruction from
Kidd, Buckland, Daubeny, Walker, the two
Duncans, and many others, both in their
several lecture-rooms, and within the walls
of old Elias Ashmole ; and partly, I must
add, by the various enlightened acts and
wise expenditure of the Radcliffe Trustees.
They many years since devoted their library
6 Care for the Future
entirely to works on Medicine and Natural
History, expending large sums, restricted only
by the little fruit they bore; they have also,
by the development of a first-class Observatory,
and especially through the labours of Manuel
Johnson, added new lustre to the University
of Halley, and Bradley, and Gregory.
To enlarge, however, on all the details of
this progress would be now of little interest.
We look more to the future than to the past.
Thankful for the benefits we have inherited,
and jealous of the honour of our fathers, we,
as practical men, take still deeper interest in
the destiny of our children, — desiring that
we leave them not worse provided in the gifts
of their age, than by God's mercy and the
foreseeing nobleness of our forefathers, we
found ourselves in those of our own.
You ask, in the SECOND place, What objects
have the promoters of the Museum kept in
view while advocating its erection ?
What is Natural History ? 7
f There are two books/ says Sir T. Browne,
' from which I collect my divinity ; besides that
written one of God, another of His servant,
Nature, — that universal and public manuscript
that lies expansed unto the eyes of all/ In
this term e Nature' are, of course, included
every known and observed form of matter by
which our world and its inhabitants were
either made or are maintained, and whatever
laws of their construction or for their main-
tenance have by reason been inferred. No
less signification of the word Nature will in
the present day be accepted; the limitation
of the term History of Nature to a small
portion of the biological sciences is not now,
of course, admitted. But even this explana-
tion does not adequately express the idea of
the word Nature; the word implies not only
the facts and the laws that have been noted
in the structure and peopling of the globe,
but still more, the relation which all those
8 Divisions in Natural History Studies
facts and laws bear to each other, in one
harmonious whole ; and yet one step further,,
in some limited instances, the first glimpses
of unuttered ideas — traces (as some believe),
though we see them darkly as in a mirror,
of unexpressed Art of the great Artificer.
To state the divisions which have been
found necessary or convenient for the pur-
poses of student or teacher in this vast in-
quiry, is to enumerate the principal sciences
belonging to the History of Nature, and
therefore the departments to which, in the
Museum, places are assigned. In these
departments there are many sub-divisions;
some of which are themselves already erected
into great and comprehensive subjects. They
cannot all be separately represented here ; for
this educational institution is not the effort
of a great government, nor the exhibition of
the scientific collections of a nation, but an
abstract, as it were, fitted for the grasp of
The Stars ; the Earth 9
a single person, — or a standing-point, from
whence the intelligent learner may take a
general survey of a great field of knowledge,
which, be his powers what they may, in his
lifetime he can never completely investigate.
Our object, then, is — ist, to give the learner
a general view of the planet on which he lives,
of its constituent parts, and of the relations
which it occupies as a world among worlds;
and 2ndly, to enable him to study, in the
most complete scientific manner, and for any
purpose, any detailed portion which his powers
qualify him to grasp.
The Astronomer, with his apparatus, may
here introduce the student to the phenomena
observed in that space of which we occupy
an infinitesimal portion, and may explain
the means and the powers by which these
phenomena have been observed and can be
predicted. The Professor of Geometry will be
able to aid the further explanation of those
io The General Laws of Nature
abstruse calculations, bringing his knowledge
to bear upon terrestrial as well as cosmical
instances. In the department of Experimental
Physics, the student will, guided by his teacher,
submit to experiment (as far as they obey the
hand or bend to the skill of man), the most
general agents and powers, which are either
diffused through space, — such as light ; or are
daily but universally needed in the organic
or inorganic changes of our earth, — as water
and air. The Higher Mathematical truths
upon which the theories of Experimental
Physics depend, can be pursued by him in
the class-room of the Professor of Natural
Philosophy. Scarcely removed from these
departments, he may next examine in the
Chemical laboratories those endless changes,
which nature in her ordinary course, or the
skill of man by contrived combinations, may
bring about in the matter of which this earth
is composed, — a department which has severed
Life on the Earth n
from itself, more for convenience than by
reason, its special school of Mineralogy. So,
insensibly, but well prepared, he will approach,
in the Geological collections and afterwards
among the rocks themselves, the study of the
development of the earth, the history of the
convulsions by which it has attained its
present form, the way in which its surface
is disposed, and, by necessity, the characters,
structure, life, origin, and decay, of its past
and present inhabitants.
Without the Geologist on one side, and
the Anatomist and Physiologist on the other,
Zoology is not worthy of its name. The
student of life, bearing in mind the more
general laws which in the several departments
above named he will have sought to appre-
ciate, will find in the collections of Zoology,
combined with the Geological specimens and
the dissections of the Anatomist, a boundless
field of interest and of inquiry, to which
12 Relations of Living Beings
almost every other science lends its aid : from
each Science he borrows a special light to
guide him through the ranges of extinct and
existing animal forms, from the lowest up to
the highest type, which; last and most per-
fect, but pre-shadowed in previous ages, is
seen in Man. By the aid of physiological
illustrations he begins to understand how hard
to unravel are the complex mechanisms and
prescient intentions of the Maker of all; and
he slowly learns to appreciate what exquisite
care is needed for discovering the real action
of even an apparently comprehended machine.
And so at last, almost bewildered, but not
cast down, he attempts to scrutinize, in the
rooms devoted to Medicine, the various in-
juries which man is doomed to undergo in
his progress towards death; he begins to
revere the beneficent contrivances which shine
forth in the midst of suffering and disease,
and to veil his face before the mysterious
Disease • 13
alterations of structure, to which there seem
'attached pain, with scarce relief, and a steady
advance, without a check, to death. He will
look, and as he looks, will cherish hope, not
unmixed with prayer, that the great Art of
Healing may by all these things advance, and
that by the progress of profounder science,
by the spread among the people of the
resultant practical knowledge, by stricter
obedience to physiological laws, by a conse-
quent more self-denying spirit, some disorders
may at a future day be cured, which cannot
be prevented, and some, perhaps, prevented,
which never can be cured.
These, then, are the departments to which
we assign, for mutual aid, and easy inter-
change of reference and comparison, a com-
mon habitation under one roof : Astronomy,
Geometry, Experimental Physics, with their
Mathematics ; Chemistry, Mineralogy, Geo-
logy, Zoology, Anatomy, Physiology, Medicine.
14 Cost of the Oxford Museum
In the THIRD place, you must consider the
way in which the Architects have provided
for these wants.
It is quite unnecessary to describe more
particularly the steps by which we obtained
the design which you have come to criticize,
and which is here brought to a practical
result, than by saying generally, that the
Professors of the subjects which have been
named, having decided on the space which each
required for satisfying (I am bound to say
in the most limited manner consistent with
efficiency) their several wants, the University
decided on allowing a grant of £30,000 for
the shell of the building, leaving to future
determination its interior fittings and various
incidental expenses, as warming, lighting,
draining, planting, fencing, and the like. In
the competition, scarce any limitation was
imposed, and to style none. Thirty-two de-
signs by anonymous contributors were sent
Difficulties of the Architects 15
in. They were in all styles. Some professed
advocates of Gothic architecture on this occa-
sion deprecated the application of Gothic Art
to secular purposes, — thereby denying to their
own style that malleability which is, perhaps,
its highest prerogative. But at length the
design Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum
was selected. It turned out to be by the
architects of the Dublin Museum. I have
seen no reason to regret the decision of the
University.
It is but just to the Architect and to the
University, to say to you at once, that the
task has been a difficult one. The University
granted a sum, which was perhaps the most
it could, in justice to other departments,
afford for the proposed purpose ; the sum
was well known to be barely sufficient to raise
a building of the cubical contents which the
Professors required for their several depart-
ments; and therefore it must be admitted
D 2
1 6 The Architects' Scrupulous Care
at once, that, without blame to either party,
there is on all sides evidence, both in material
and design, of a rigorously restrained expen-
diture, just as in respect of material and finish
the direct contrary may be noticed in another
structure, recently built for the University
by my esteemed friend Mr. Cockerell, — the
Taylor Institution.
Once for all on the subject of cost, — a
consideration of the utmost importance in the
relation between employers and employed in
the matter of building, — I am happy here to
record that it is within my personal know-
ledge that extraordinary and unsparing pains
have been taken by Woodward and Deane,
to produce, often with great additional labour
to themselves, the almost impossible combina-
tion of artistic effect and complete convenience,
with most limited means.
You who bring critical faculties and a
knowledge of building to bear on the subject,
Grounds for Choice of Style 17
need scarcely be told what is here stated.
It is only to be greatly regretted that a
contrary opinion should have been expressed,
due in part to ignorance of facts, and in
part, more unfortunately still, to one or two
accidental miscalculations in constructing
estimates for extra work, as well as to an
error in the calculated elasticity of wrought-
iron supports to the roof.
No Physician will probably be heard on
the subject of Art, so that it were waste of
time, both to you and to me, to express,
even if I hold them, many opinions on this
matter; but still, as one of those appointed
by the University to select a design, it was
my duty to satisfy myself on certain salient
principles, of which I will state two.
First, that in the selection of a style for
a scientific building, the first consideration
with me was its practical fitness for its
purpose ; that, in this respect of capacity of
i8 Laws of Gothic
adaptation to any given wants, Gothic has
no superior in any known form of Art, of any
period or country; that this being so, it is,
upon the whole, the best suited to the general
architectural character of mediaeval Oxford.
Secondly, that supposing Gothic to be
adopted, it must in all respects adapt itself
to the necessities of the departments ; in no
way impose its Art to the hindrance of our
convenience ; it must confine its ornaments
to subjects more or less connected with the
objects of the building, as the Middle Age
architects confined their ecclesiastical decora-
tions in sacred edifices; it must be willing to
use whatever material the skill of modern ages
has placed at the disposal of the builder ; and
the arrangements of various kinds should not,
on account of Gothic associations, be inferior
in mechanical skill or other convenience, to
the forms or methods now in general use.
Believing in these principles, I think the
Arrangements of the Building • 19
University was right in adopting Woodward
and Deane's design. I will not indulge myself
further on this topic, nor detain you with
speculations on Gothic Art; an old college
friend, and a very different hand, will presently
do this in the letter which I shall read to you.
It remains only, therefore, to describe the
•
general plan by which the union has been
effected between the professorial demands
and financial conditions on the one hand,
and the requirements of Gothic Architecture,
as interpreted by a refined and almost fas-
tidious artist, on the other.
A few words will explain «the principles
which determined the kind of accommodation.
For the illustration of Nature the student
requires four things : first, the work-room,
where he may practically see and work for
himself ; secondly, the lecture-room, where
he may see and be taught that which by
himself he can neither see nor learn, and, as
20 Construction of Central Courf
an adjunct to these, a room for more private
study for each ; thirdly, general space for the
common display of any illustrative specimens
capable of preservation, — so placed, in relation
to the rest of the building, as to be convenient
for reference and comparison between all the
different branches ; and, lastly, a library, in
which whatever has been done, or is now doing,
in the science of this and other periods and
countries, may be conveniently ascertained.
The centre of the edifice, which is intended
to contain the Collections, consists of a quad-
rangle. This large area is covered by a glass
roof, supported on cast-iron columns. The
ornaments of the spandrels (due to the
admirable skill of Mr. Skid more of Coventry)
are in wrought-iron. The rigid (cast) material
supports the vertical pressure; the malleable
(wrought) iron is employed for the ornament,
and is chiefly hand-wrought. The present roof
is the second that has been erected. It had
Ironwork 21
been believed that a departure could be safely
made from the original designs of Deane and
Woodward for the sake of lightness of form ;
and that for the same reason the supports
might be made of wrought-iron tubes. This
experiment failed, and a structure on the
general principle of the original design has
replaced the attempt. Some persons will
probably regret that when the new roof was
erected, it was hopeless for the Architects to
propose, as they would have wished, the sub-
stitution of stone shafts, few in number, to
support the roof. A step, but not a finalstep,
has been made towards an harmonious union
of the ironwork of the nineteenth century with
the refined architecture of the Middle Ages.
The wrought-iron ornaments represent, in
the large spandrels that occupy the inter-
spaces between the arches of the principal
aisles, large interwoven branches, with leaf
and flower and fruit, of lime, chesnut,
22 Arcades of the Central Court
sycamore, walnut, palm, and other trees and
shrubs, of native or of exotic growth; and
in various parts of the lesser decorations, in
the capitals, and nestled in the trefoils of
the girders, leaves of elm, brier, water-lily,
passion-flower, ivy, holly, and many others,
which hereafter a catalogue will enumerate.
The central court is surrounded by an open
arcade of two stories. This arcade furnishes
ready means of communication between the
several departments and their collections in
the area. The roof springs from above the
upper arcade, so that the arcades on both
floors are open to the covered court.
The arcade on the ground-floor is entered
from the centre of each side of the court, and
ready communication is made from it to every
part of the collection. In each of the arcades
are seven piers forming eight openings, and
carrying eight discharging arches, within which
are two lesser arches, resting on their outer
Arcades of the Central Court 23
sides on the piers, and at their junction with
each other on a shaft with a capital and base.
On the upper story there is a similar
arrangement, excepting only that the piers
and shafts are of less height, though the
piers are of the same number ; on this account,
in the same horizontal space between each
pier, four arches are supported by three shafts
in the upper arcade, instead of as below, two
arches supported at their union by one shaft.
There are, on the ground-floor, thirty-
three piers and thirty shafts — on the upper
floor, thirty-three piers and ninety-five shafts.
Thus one hundred and twenty-five shafts
surround the court ; and if we include the
capitals and bases of the piers, there are one
hundred and ninety-one capitals and bases1.
The shafts have been carefully selected,
1 The number of shafts and piers on the side by which
you enter, differs from the other three sides : hence the
uneven numbers.
24 The Shafts are Geological Illustrations
under the direction of the Professor of Geology,
from quarries which furnish examples of many
of the most important rocks of the British
Islands. On the lower arcade are placed, on the
west side, the granitic series ; on the east, the
metamorphic ; on the north, calcareous rocks,
chiefly from Ireland ; on the south, the marbles
of England. In the upper floor, as far as may
be, an analogous distribution is adopted1.
In a table which follows, the kind of rocks,
their localities, and the carvings which accom-
pany them, are noticed. The visitor having
completed the circuit of the ground-floor, may
ascend by the south staircase to the upper floor,
and pass round to the right, examining the
columns from the south-west angle, — that which
he meets at the head of the southern stairs.
1 Further particulars of these shafts, and of the
arrangements of the plants represented in the capitals,
are given in an admirable letter for which I am indebted
to Professor PHILLIPS. See p. 91. For the statues already
erected see p. 102.
Sculptures of Animals and Plants 25
The capitals and bases represent various
groups of plants and animals, illustrating
different climates and various epochs. They
are mainly arranged according to their natural
orders, and are the more required to repre-
sent the vegetable creation, as the botanical
collections will remain, very prooerly, at the
Botanical Gardens.
On massive corbels, projecting from the
fronts of the piers, there are placed the statues
of great men who first discovered, or first
brought to important results, the several
branches of knowledge which the edifice is
intended to promote. As those who have laid
the deepest and widest the foundations of
science, Aristotle and Bacon are set up at the
portal, — the one given by Her Majesty the
Queen, the other by Undergraduates of Oxford.
In the mathematical department is placed
Leibnitz; in the astronomical, Newton, Gali-
leo ; in that of physics, Oersted ; in the
26 Statues of Great Discoverers
chemical, Davy, Priestley; in that of zoology
and botany, Linnaeus ; in that of medicine,
Hippocrates, Harvey; in that of applied
mechanics, Watt. These all are already set
here for the contemplation and example of all
who may hereafter enter, with various purpose,
this place of study and of work.
But the history of Science even by its most
conspicuous landmarks is not to be sketched
without many more names than these. We
desire to set before the visitor the statue of
Descartes ; to recall to all comers the memory
of Euclid and Lagrange among mathema-
ticians ; of Hipparchus and Kepler among
astronomers ; of Archimedes, Roger Bacon,
Robert Boyle, Franklin, Young, among physic-
ists; of Lavoisier and Stahl among chemists;
of Hutton and Werner among geologists ; of
Ray, Jussieu, and Humboldt among zoologists
and botanists ; of Hunter and Haller, of
Sydenham and Harvey among those who have
Her Majesty's Gifts 27
most advanced physiology and medicine; of
George Stephenson, who added railways to the
practical mechanics of the world.
Here I must not omit to record that the ex-
pression in the architecture, by this simple and
happy method, of the intentions of the build-
ing, was engrafted upon it as the work went
on, and was not (I need hardly say) included in
the first design, or in the original estimate. All
this has since been added by the zealous muni-
ficence of many friends of our undertaking.
I may be excused for here repeating a public
fact. Her Majesty QUEEN VICTORIA was made
acquainted with the circumstance that these
statues could be erected only by private gift :
a hope was expressed that if Her Majesty
thought fit to set an example to contributors,
she would choose as her donation the first of
the great school of modern science, himself
an Englishman, Francis Lord Bacon. In
reply, the royal, and, more also, the kindly
28 Her Majesty's Gifts
announcement reached the University, that
not Bacon only, but the four great names that
followed next on the proposed list of dis-
coverers, should be executed by Her Majesty's
command and at her own costs. And I know
not but that this gracious act was enhanced
in value, when it was made known by the
Chancellor on the same occasion on which
the Queen's gift was publicly announced, that
the Undergraduates had offered to erect the
monuments to Aristotle and Cuvier.
They who desire to examine in detail the
shafts and the illustrative carvings, should
proceed from the entrance to the right, as far
as the angle, and then return to the north-
ward. They will thus follow the Rocks as
Professor Phillips has placed them, and will
have the names of the Plants which have
been represented in natural groups, more
or less idealized, or literally copied, by the
workmen.
Lower Corridor, West and North Sides 29
LOWER ARCADE,
(West side, going North).
SHAFTS.
Gray granite, Aber-
deen.
Red granite, Peter-
head.
Porphyritic gray
granite, from La-
morna (Corn wall) .
Syenite, from Cham-
wood Forest.
Mottled granite of
Cruachan.
Red granite of Ross
in Mull.
CAPITALS AND CORBELS.
The corbels marked c.
c. Sagittaria sagittifolia.
' AlismacecB Alisma Plantago.
c. Alisma ranunculoides.
I c. Limnocharis.
Butomacece < Butomus umbellatus.
( c. Limnocharis.
( c. Fan-palm.
Palmacece < Date-palm.
( c. Fan- palm.
!c. Phoenix.
Cocoa-palm.
C. Caryota.
!c. Tradescantia.
Colchicum and Pontederia.
c. Dracaena,
c. Yucca.
Lillacece Lilium, Tulipa, Fritillaria.
c. Aloe.
LOWER ARCADE (North side, going East).
Devonian lime-
stone, from Tor-
quay.
Mountainlimestone,
Cork.
Mountainlimestone,
King's County.
Green serpentine,
Galway.
( c. Sagittaria.
Pandanacece < Pandanus (screw-pine).
( c. Cyclamen.
( c. Typha.
Typhacece < Sparganium ramosum.
( c. Typha.
( c. Arum, Pothos.
Aracece < Dracunculus vulgaris,
( 0. Caladium.
( c. Pothos.
Acoracece < Calla u3Ethiopica.
( c. Orontium.
E
30 The Lower Corridor, East Side
SHAFTS.
Green serpentine,
Galway.
Mountain limestone,
co. Limerick.
Mountain limestone,
Cork.
Devonian limestone,
St. Mary Church.
CAPITALS AND CORBELS.
The corbels marked c.
( c. Papyrus.
Cyperacece < Cyperus rigidus.
( c. Cladium.
f c. Bronms.
I Wheat, barley, oats, In-
dian corn, and sugar-
cane (with sparrows).
C. Rice and canary-grass,
with buntings, canaries,
and quails.
C. Platycerium.
Acrostichum aureum.
C. Adiantum.
f c. Hart's tongue, Lastraea
cristata.
J Ferus, Scolopendrium vul-
1 gare, Bleclmum boreale,
Lastrsea, Filix mas.
[ c. Mallow.
G-raminece \
Filices
LOWER ARCADE (East side, going South).
Trap rock, Killer-
ton, Devon.
Elvan rock of Tre-
rice.
Schorlaceous rock,
Roche.
Serpentine (Corn-
wall).
Serpentine (Corn-
wall).
c. Cycas revoluta.
Zamiacece Dion edule.
c. Cycas revoluta.
( C. Encephalartos.
Zamiacece < Zamia horrida.
( c. Encephalartos.
!c. Wellingtonia.
Thuja siberica.
C. Sequoia sempervirens.
!c. Stone-pine.
Abies excelsa.
c. Cluster-pine.
ic. Araucaria Cunninghami ,
Araucaria imbricata.
c. Araucaria Braziliensis.
The Lower Corridor, South Side 31
SHAFTS.
Porphyry, Inverara.
Schorlaceous por-
phyritic rock, St.
Leven's.
Black serpentine
(Lizard).
CAPITALS AND CORBELS,
The corbels marked c,
( C. Dacrydium.
Taxacece j Taxus baccata.
( C. Salisburia.
( o. Smilax aspera.
Smilacece < Smilax sarsaparilla.
( c. Smilax pseudochina.
!c. Small-leaved bryony.
Black bryony (tamus).
c. Elephant's foot.
LOWEK AECADE (South side, going West).
Gypsum, Chellas-
ton.
Mountain limestone,
Mona.
Mountain limestone,
Frosterley.
OrcMdacece
C. Epidendron cochleatum ?
Dendrobium calceolaria,
c. Cypripedium (lady's
slipper).
Musacece < Musa.
( c. Strelitzia.
c. Maranta bicolor.
Marantacece Maranta.
c. Heliconia.
Breccia, Mendip.
1
Zingiberacece \ Alpinia nutans.
Green serpentine,
[ 0. Broad-leaved ginger.
( c.
Mona or Angle-
Iridacece < Iris germanica.
sea.
( 0. Gladiolus.
Mountainlimestone,
Hotwells, Bristol.
Amarylli-
dacece
I c. Narcissus macleagii.
Narcissus pseudonarcissus.
. c. Narcissus aurantiaca.
Mountain limestone
ofGarsdale,York-
shire.
Amarylli- ( a Vallota purpurea.
dacece i Amaryllis Johnsoni.
f c. Leucoium.
Mountain limestone
of Dent, York-
Eromeliacece
C. Pine-apple.
Ananassa sativa.
shire.
C. Lilium lancifolium.
E 2
32 Upper Corridor, West and North Sides
UPPER ARCADE,
(West side, going North).
Augitic porphyry, Aberdeen-
shire.
Ked granite, Peterhead.
Gray granite, Aberdeen.
Porphyry, Scotland.
Schorl rock, Cornwall.
Porphyry, Scotland.
Serpentine, Lizard.
Granite, Lamorna.
Serpentine, Lizard.
Schorlaceous rock, Cornwall.
Granite, St. Just.
Schorlaceous rock, Cornwall.
Granite, Cornwall.
Porphyritic granite, Cornwall.
Serpentine.
Porphyritic granite, Cornwall.
Serpentine.
Granite, Carnmoor, Cornwall.
Ditto.
Ditto.
Porphyry, Loch Tay.
Elvan, Cornwall.
Schorlaceous granite, Cornwall.
UPPEK ARCADE (North side, going East).
From Armagh.
„ Kilkenny.
,, Armagh.
„ Clonony.
„ Cork.
Green serpentine, Connemara.
From Donegal.
Green serpentine, Connemara.
From Cork.
„ Donegal.
, Cork.
From Armagh.
„ Kilkenny.
„ Armagh.
„ Connemara.
„ Galway.
„ Connemara.
„ Armagh.
,, Tullamore.
„ Tullamore.
, Tullamore.
Upper Corridor, East and South Sides 33
UPPER ARCADE (East side, going South).
From Mansfield. \
„ Mansfield. > Permian.
„ Mansfield. »
,, Portland.
„ Stamford. Oolite.
„ Buckingham.
Slate. ,
Slate. [ Wales.
Slate. )
Granite, from Jersey.
Ditto.
Ditto.
Galloway granite.
Cornish granite.
Galloway granite.
Oolite, from Ketton.
Blue lias.
White lias.
Purbeck marble.
Ditto.
Purbeck marble.
Chellaston, gypsum.
From Mendip, breccia.
„ Anston, dolomite.
UPPER ARCADE (South side, going West).
SHAFTS.
From Torquay.
Mountain limestone1.
From Mary Church.
,, South Wales.
„ Menai .
„ South Wales.
„ Mona.
Mountain limestone.
From Mona.
„ Derbyshire.
,, Derbyshire.
„ Menai.
„ Derbyshire.
From Menai, black.
„ Menai.
„ Frosterley, Durham.
,, Plymouth.
„ Chudleigh.
„ Totness.
„ Dent, Yorkshire.
„ Garsdale, Yorkshire.
„ Bristol.
„ Torquay.
,, Oreton, Salop.
„ Mary Church, Devon.
The locality is not known.
34 Words on the Walls
Several offers have been made to place in-
scriptions in carving or in colour on the walls
of the corridors, in the libraries, or in the
several departments. How curiously instruc-
tive some of these might be ! Take two for
example, in the Medical Department — this,
quaint saying and pregnant rebuke recorded
by Stobaeus :
" Tp6(pi\os larpos epanTjOeis, TLS av yei/oiro re'Xeios larpos'
'O TO. Sward, ^(prj, KCU TO. p,fj dvvara Swdpfvos diayiyvdxTKfiv."
' Trophilus the physician being asked who is a per-
fect physician, gave answer, "He who distinguishes
between what can, and what cannot be done ".'
Then the weighty, but half-known words
with which Hippocrates solemnly begins his
instructions —
" CO /3i'or ftpaxvs, f) 8e re^vr] paicpr), 6 Se Kaipos o£vs, f] 8e
nelpa <r(paXepr), f) dc Kpiats xaXfTrq."
' Life is short ;
but
Art long ;
Opportunities fleeting;
Experience deceitful;
True judgement difficult.'
Words on the Walls 35
Or the saying of Sir Thomas Browne —
'NATURE is the ART of GOD.'
Shall we add, with perhaps new signifi-
cance,—
' Ipsi peribunt, Tu autem permanes : et omnes sicut
vestimentum veterascent.'
Great hopes are entertained that means will
be obtained for painting in fresco the brick
spandrels now left bare for this purpose in the
area ; and that then, in subordinated harmony
to the general effect, the colouring of the iron-
work may be attempted, and the present
temporary greys rectified. Many of the rooms
are already coloured, and serve as an illus-
tration of cheap and simple, yet artistic
decoration. One room has been illustrated by
a large geological painting of the Mer de
Glace, and by one of the lava streams of
Vesuvius; these are due to the leisure hours
of a parochial clergyman, the Rev. R. St. John
36 The several Departments
Tyrwhitt. Ample wall-space awaits similar
industry, and, we will hope, as successful
effort.
Round the arcade is ranged upon three sides
the main block of the building. The east is
wisely left unencumbered by rooms, to afford
ready means for future extension : land has been
purchased, which will admit of such extension
whenever it is required. I may not describe
the main block in detail; you can visit such
departments as you think fit. The most com-
plete and largest is that of Chemistry, because
the practical work of that extensive subject is
likely to be here most extensively carried on.
To every department is attached a lecture-
room, a private room, and, wherever required,
work-rooms and laboratories.
The order in which the departments are
reached is — on the right of the entrance the
department of Chemistry ; on the south side,
first the Physical, next the Mineralogical and
Contents of the Area 37
Geological rooms; to the left of the entrance
the rooms devoted to Medicine; on the north
the rooms for the Delegates and the Keeper,
and the Physiological establishment.
The Area itself will contain the typical
illustrations for study, viz. in the South Aisle,
such as may be thought proper for display by
the Professors of Mathematics, Astronomy,,
and Physics. Mineralogical specimens and
Chemical substances will also be arranged in
this quarter.
The great Central Aisle will show Palaeon-
tological collections ; and we of Oxford may
hope the memory of BUCKLAND will long
cling to the treasures his energy collected
and his genius illuminated.
The remaining space to the North will be
devoted to the Ashmolean collections in
Zoology, and to the Physiological series
which the enlightened liberality of Dean
Liddell and the Chapter of Christ Church
38 Lecture-rooms, Laboratories,
have allowed to be removed thither for the
public convenience and instruction.
Beyond or outside the main block, to the
north, because the coolest side, are the Ana-
tomical and Zoological departments, with an
open yard, and beyond it, Dissecting-rooms.
On the south side, are the rooms which require
special arrangements for experiments on light ;
a yard for purposes connected with Chemistry
and Experimental Physics; and further still,
out-buildings, containing workshops, furnace-
rooms, balance-rooms, and laboratories. Thus
all noxious operations are removed from the
principal pile, but joined with much con-
venience to the lecture-rooms, and communi-
cating easily with the Central Court, common
to all the departments.
The laboratory for the chemical students is
the large detached building seen at the south-
west angle of the Museum. The Abbot's kitchen
at Glastonbury will be recognised by you as the
The Library 39
prototype. There can be no more successful
adaptation of an ancient example to modern
wants, inasmuch as no more convenient nor
more airy laboratory could be contrived, and
certainly no bolder or more picturesque design.
On the upper floor are a large lecture-room
for 500 persons intended for occasional use,
furnished with gas and ample water supply,
with efficient drainage, for experiments; the
rooms for the Astronomical and Mathemetical
Professors, and the Entomological collections of
Mr. Hope ; and along the front, the Library and
Reading-rooms, together 200 feet in length.
Concerning the libraries, to the honour of
the Radcliffe Trustees (the Earl Bathurst,
W. S. Dugdale, Esq., the Right Hon. S.
Herbert, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone,
and the Right Hon. T. H. Sotheron Estcourt),
it must be said, that they have seriously before
them the question whether they may not
transfer their collections of Scientific Books to
40 The Library
the new Scientific Institution. Here is not the
place to enter into the arguments which are
involved in the proposition; it is sufficient to
say, that close by the Scientific Collections,
some library of Scientific Literature is neces-
sary. Wherever the Collections are, the students
will be. The memory of the great physician
will be doubly honoured, should the noble pile
that bears his name, bear it still as the Radcliffe
Library ; but, marching as it were with the
new wants of a new age, it may supply
a splendid reading-room to the over-crowded
Bodleian Library, afford space for the display
and protection of rare manuscripts, and of
Mr. Hope's great collection of historical engrav-
ings ; while his funds and his literary stores
begin a new scientific life at the Museum. The
Trustees will not probably be foiled in their
endeavour to serve the best interests, both of
their founders and of the University. Should
they be so, however, there will be long and
The Curator's Residence 41
costly labour before those who use the Museum
will be supplied with such a collection of
illustrated works on all scientific subjects, of
periodicals, and transactions ; or endowed with
so liberal funds for the maintenance of a library.
Lastly, I will but mention the graceful
building which at the south-east angle gives
a residence to the Curator. The elegance of its
form, and the beauty of its many details, will
long tell the tale, that the soul of its architect
yearned after the subtler refinements of
Gothic Art; and will say, in unmistakable
terms, what that man might have accom-
plished, had ample means been ever placed
at his command.
Here, then, I must stop, — but not before
I have added, that while this building has been
in progress, we have not been wholly un-
mindful of the hardy hands that worked for
its erection. Alas ! we can do little for each
other, to ease the daily toil, and sweeten the
42 Designs by the Workmen
hard-earned bread. But with the laying the
foundation-stone we also erected a humble mess-
room by its side, where the workmen have daily
met for their stated meals, have begun each day
with simple prayers from willing hearts, have
had various volumes placed for their use, and
have received frequent instruction and aid from
the chief officer in the building, Mr. Bramwell,
our clerk of the works.
The temper of the Architect has reached
the men. In their work they have had
pleasure. The capitals are partly designed
by the men themselves, and especially by the
family of O'Shea, who bring wit and alacrity
from the Emerald Isle to their cheerful task.
The carving of the capitals and the decoration
of the windows, limited, very limited, as our
means have been, have raised ever living in-
terest ; and as strangers walk in the streets,
ever and anon they hear the theme discussed
by the workers who pass by.
Mr. Ruskin's Letter 43
May the work prosper ! — and in many
succeeding generations, when we are long
forgotten, may young minds be here freshly
learning and warmly loving the things which
they may be allowed to perceive as in a mirror,
dimly; but which we, by the ineffable grace
of God, may, in ways at present unconceived,
be then beholding, and knowing them then as
they are known.
I have purposely avoided the expression of
my sentiments on many points which interest
me, lest I be, as perhaps I already am, tedious
to you. I delay, therefore, no longer to read
a letter which has just reached me from
Mr. Ruskin.
ACLAND,
' I have been very anxious, since I
last heard from you, respecting the progress
of the works at the Museum, as I thought
44 Mr. Ruskin's Letter
I could trace in your expressions some doubt
of an entirely satisfactory issue.
'Entirely satisfactory very few issues are
or can be; and when the enterprise, as in
this instance, involves the development of
many new and progressive principles, we
must always be prepared for a due measure
of disappointment — due partly to human
weakness, and partly to what the ancients
would have called fate — and we may, perhaps,
most wisely call the law of trial, which forbids
any great good being usually accomplished
without various compensations and deductions,
probably not a little humiliating.
' Perhaps in writing to you what seems to
me to be the bearing of matters respecting
your Museum, I may be answering a few of the
doubts of others, as well as fears of your own.
6 1 am quite sure that when you first used
your influence to advocate the claims of a
Gothic design, you did so under the conviction,
Decoration difficult 45
shared by all the seriously purposed defenders
of the Gothic style, that the essence and power
of Gothic, properly so called, lay in its adapt-
ability to all need ; in that perfect and unlimited
flexibility which would enable the architect to
provide all that was required, in the simplest
and most convenient way ; and to give you the
best offices, the best lecture-rooms, laboratories,
and museums, which could be provided with the
sum of money at his disposal.
fSo far as the architect has failed in doing
this ; so far as you find yourself, with the
other professors, in anywise inconvenienced
by forms of architecture; so far as pillars or
piers come in your way, when you have to
point, or vaults in the way of your voice,
when you have to speak, or mullions in the
way of your light, when you want to see; —
just so far the architect has failed in ex-
pressing his own principles, or those of pure
Gothic art. I do not suppose that such
F
46 Mr. Ruskin's Letter
failure has taken place to any considerable
extent ; but so far as it has taken place, it
cannot in justice be laid to the score of the
style, since precedent has shown sufficiently,
that very uncomfortable and useless rooms
may be provided in all other styles as well
as in Gothic ; and I think if, in a building
arranged for many objects of various kinds,
at a time when the practice of architecture
has been somewhat confused by the inven-
tions of modern science, and is hardly yet
organized completely with respect to the
new means at its disposal ; if, under such
circumstances, and with somewhat limited
funds, you have yet obtained a building in all
main points properly fulfilling its requirements,
you have, I think, as much as could be hoped
from the adoption of any style whatsoever.
*But I am much more anxious about the
decoration of the building; for I fear that it
will be hurried in completion, and that,
Principles of Decoration 47
partly in haste and partly in mistimed
economy, a great opportunity may be lost
of advancing the best interest of architec-
tural, and in that, of all other arts. For
the principles of Gothic decoration, in them-
selves as simple and beautiful as those of
Gothic construction, are far less understood,
as yet, by the English public, and it is little
likely that any effective measures can be
taken to carry them out. You know, as
well as I, what those principles are; yet it
may be convenient to you that I should here
state them briefly as I accept them myself, and
have reason to suppose they are accepted by
the principal promoters of the Gothic revival.
CI. The first principle of Gothic decoration
is that a given quantity of good art will be
more generally useful when exhibited on a
large scale, and forming part of a connected
system, than when it is small and separated.
That is to say, a piece of sculpture or
F 2
48 . Mr. Raskin's Letter
painting of a certain allowed merit, will be
more useful when seen on the front of a
building, or at the end of a room,, and, there-
fore, by many persons, than if it be so small
as to be only capable of being seen by one
or two at a time ; and it will be more useful
when so combined with other work as to
produce that kind of impression usually termed
" sublime" — as it is felt on looking at any
great series of fixed paintings, or at the front
of a cathedral — than if it be so separated as
to excite only a special wonder or admiration,
such as we feel for a jewel in a cabinet.
'The paintings by Meissonier in the
French Exhibition of this year were bought,
I believe, before the Exhibition opened, for
250 guineas each. They each represented one
figure, about six inches high — one, a student
reading ; the other, a courtier standing in
a dress-coat. Neither of these paintings
conveyed any information, or produced any
Principles of Decoration 49
emotion whatever, except that of surprise
at their minute and dextrous execution.
They will be placed by their possessors on
the walls of small private apartments, where
they will probably, once or twice a week,
form the subject of five minutes5 conversation
while people drink their coffee after dinner.
The sum expended on these toys would have
been amply sufficient to cover a large building
with noble frescoes, appealing to every passer
by, and representing a large portion of the
history of any given period. But the general
tendency of the European patrons of art is to
grudge all sums spent in a way thus calcu-
lated to confer benefit on the public, and to
grudge none for minute treasures, of which the
principal advantage is that a lock and key can
always render them invisible.
fl have no hesitation in saying that an
acquisitive selfishness, rejoicing somewhat
even in the sensation of possessing what can
50 Mr. Ruskin's Letter
NOT be seen by others, is at the root of this
art-patronage. It is, of course, coupled with
a sense of securer and more convenient invest-
ment in what may be easily protected and easily
carried from place to place, than in large and
immoveable works ; and also with a vulgar de-
light in the minute curiosities of productive art,
rather than in the exercise of inventive genius,
or the expression of great facts or emotions.
'The first aim of the Gothic Revivalists is
to counteract, as far as possible, this feeling on
all its three grounds. We desire (A) to make
art large and publicly beneficial, instead of small
and privately engrossed or secluded ; (B) to
make art fixed instead of portable, associating
it with local character and historical memory ;
(C) to make art expressive instead of curious,
valuable for its suggestions and teachings, more
than for the mode of its manufacture.
6 II. The second great principle of the Gothic
Revivalists is that all art employed in decora-
Gothic Revivalists 51
tion should be informative, conveying truthful
statements about natural facts, if it conveys any
statement. It may sometimes merely compose
its decorations of mosaics, chequers, bosses,
or other meaningless ornaments ; but if it
represents organic form (and in all important
places it will represent it), it will give that
form truthfully, with as much resemblance to
nature as the necessary treatment of the piece
of ornament in question will admit of.
'This principle is more disputed than the
first among the Gothic Revivalists themselves.
I, however, hold it simply and entirely,
believing that ornamentation is always,
caeteris paribus, most valuable and beautiful
when it is founded on the most extended
knowledge of natural forms, and continually
conveys such knowledge to the spectator1.
CIII. The third great principle of the
1 A more detailed statement of this principle is given
in a following letter.
52 Mr. Ruskin's Letter
Gothic revival is that all architectural
ornamentation should be executed by the
men who design it, and should be of various
degrees of excellence, admitting, and there-
fore exciting, the intelligent co-operation of
various classes of workmen ; and that a
great public edifice should be, in sculpture
and painting, somewhat the same as a great
chorus in music, in which, while, perhaps,
there may be only one or two voices
perfectly trained, and of perfect sweetness
(the rest being in various degrees weaker
and less cultivated), yet all being ruled in
harmony, and each sustaining a part con-
sistent with its strength, the body of sound
is sublime, in spite of individual weaknesses.
'The Museum at Oxford was, I know,
intended by its designer to exhibit in its de-
coration the working of these three principles ;
but in the very fact of its doing so, it becomes
exposed to chances of occasional failure, or
Three Principles illustrated 53
even to serious discomfitures, such as would not
at all have attended the adoption of an estab-
lished mode of modern work. It is easy to carve
capitals on models known for four thousand
years, and impossible to fail in the application
of mechanical methods and formalized rules.
But it is not possible to appeal vigorously to
new canons of judgement without the chance of
giving offence ; nor to summon into service the
various phases of human temper and intelli-
gence, without occasionally finding the tempers
rough and the intelligence feeble. The Oxford
Museum is, I believe, the first building in this
country which has had its ornamentation, in
any telling parts, trusted to the invention of
the workman : the result is highly satisfac-
tory, the projecting windows of the staircases
being as beautiful in effect as anything I know
in civil Gothic : but far more may be accom-
plished for the building if the completion 'of
its carving be not hastened. Many men of
54 Mr. Ruskin's Letter
high artistic power might be brought to take
an interest in it, and various lessons and
suggestions given to the workmen which
would materially advantage the final decora-
tion of leading features. No very great
Gothic building, so far as I know, was ever
yet completed without some of this wise
deliberation and fruitful patience.
( I wras in hopes from the beginning that the
sculpture might have been rendered typically
illustrative of the English Flora : how far this
idea has been as yet carried out I do not know ;
but I know that it cannot be properly carried
out without a careful examination of the avail-
able character of the principal genera, such as
architects have not hitherto undertaken. The
proposal which I heard advanced the other day,
of adding a bold entrance-porch to the fayade,
appeared to me every way full of advantage,
the blankness of the fayade having been, to
my mind, from the first, a serious fault in
Sculptures of Flora 55
the design. If a subscription were opened
for the purpose of erecting one, I should
think there were few persons interested in
modern art who would not be glad to join
in forwarding such an object.
( I think I could answer for some portions of
the design being superintended by the best of
our modern sculptors and painters ; and I be-
lieve that, if so superintended, the porch might
and would become the crowning beauty of the
building, and make all the difference between
its being only a satisfactory and meritorious
work, or a most lovely and impressive one.
( The interior decoration is a matter of much
greater difficulty ; perhaps you will allow me to
defer the few words I have to say about it till
I have time for another letter : which, however,
I hope to find speedily.
e Believe me, my dear Acland,
e Ever affectionately yours,
c J. RUSKIN.'
56 Let Gothic observe its Laws
The principles thus clearly enumerated
by Mr. Ruskin are, in the main, those that
animate the earnest student of Gothic. It
is not for me especially to advocate Gothic
Art, but only to urge, that if called into
life, it should be in conformity to its own
proper laws of vitality. If, week after week,
in my youth, with fresh senses and a docile
spirit, I have drunk in each golden glow
that is poured by a Mediterranean sun from
over the blue Aegean upon the Athenian
Parthenon ; if, day by day, sitting on Mars5
Hill, I have watched each purple shadow,
as the temple darkened in majesty against
the evening sky; if so, it has been to teach
me, as the alphabet of all Art, to love all
truth and to hate all falsehood, and to kiss the
hand of every Master who has brought down,
under whatever circumstances, and in what-
ever age, one spark of true light from the
Beauty and the subtle Law which stamp the
Pre-Raffaelites lived but once 57
meanest work of the Everliving, Everworking,
Artist.
So, at least, here we have sought to hinder
all ornament^ unless that ornament be free from
vicious carelessness ; and to stop all professing
transcript of Nature, unless it be painstaking,
sagacious, and honest. Herein, we owe a just
debt of gratitude to the young school of Artists,
called, half in jest, Pre-Raffaelites. Genuine
Pre-Raffaelites lived but once. The yearning,
half-graceless simplicity which made Raffaelle
what he was, and which Raffaelle lived himself
to lose, is, nevertheless, no simplicity after
Raffaelle died. But faithful love of the Nature
of God, and power to select by our reason, and
by a cultivated mind, that which is fit for
human work, and which human skill can accom-
plish, is of all time — of our times, as well as
of the days of Giotto, or of the almost matchless
hand and heart of Van Eyck. Woe to us in the
judgement of posterity, if, knowingly, because
58 Be not hasty to finish
we care not, or unknowingly, because we see
not, we either will not work faithfully in our
Art ourselves, or cannot let others work who
will. Rather do as we have done — carve one
capital as well as we can, though that be feebly,
— and so cheer one human heart, that his love
in his daily work may be stamped on our and
his behalf for centuries, rather than varnish the
whole surface with endless design, which is too
coarse to be an imitation of natural objects,
and too mean and too often repeated, to be
counted within the range of Art.
This, then, we have desired in our area ; to
represent some natural objects as our best
workmen feel them ; to do a few well ; and to
wait for completion to a future day, when the
hewn blocks may be carved by the imagination,
or in the reality, as our children will.
I must now, for the present, bid you and the
building farewell. With no wish to deprecate,
but rather earnestly desiring your thorough
Be not hasty to finish 59
criticism and your every counsel, I may still
remind you, that though, perhaps, not fully
aware of the difficulties through which the
Museum has become what it is, you cannot
be more convinced of the imperfections which
partly circumstances, partly our common
nature, have stamped upon it, than are those
who, for many years, trod each step towards
its erection, before its Art was discussed, or
even its Artist named.
SECOND
LETTER FROM MR. RUSKIN
'January 20, 1859.
DEAR ACLAND,
6 1 was not able to write, as I had hoped,
from Switzerland, for I found it impossible to
lay down any principles respecting the decora-
tions of the Museum which did not in one way
or other involve disputed points, too many, and
too subtle, to be discussed in a letter. Nor do
I feel the difficulty less in writing to you now,
so far as regards the question occurring in our
late conversations, respecting the best mode of
completing these interior decorations. Yet
I must write, if only to ask that I may be in
Need of New Knowledge 61
some way associated with you in what you
are now doing to bring the Museum more
definitely before the public mind; that I
may be associated at least in the expression
of my deep sense of the noble purpose of the
building — of the noble sincerity of effort in
its architect — of the endless good which the
teachings to which it will be devoted must,
in their ultimate issue, accomplish for man-
kind. How vast the range of that issue, you
have shown in the lecture which I have just
read, in which you have so admirably traced
the chain of the physical sciences as it en-
compasses the great concords of this visible
universe. But how deep the workings of
these new springs of knowledge are to be —
and how great our need of them, and how
far the brightness and the beneficence of
them are to reach among all the best interests
of men — perhaps none of us can yet con-
ceive, far less know or say. For, much as I
G
62 Mr. Ruskiris Second Letter
reverence physical science as a means of
mental education (and you know how I have
contended for it, as such, now these twenty
years, from the sunny afternoon of spring
when Ehrenberg, and you, and I, went hunt-
ing for infusoria in Christ Church meadow
streams, to the hour when the prize offered
by Sir Walter Trevelyan and yourself for
the best essay on the Fauna of that meadow,
marked the opening of a new era in English
education) — much, I say, as I reverence
physical science in this function, I rever-
ence it, at this moment, more as the source
of utmost human practical power, and the
means by which the far distant races of the
world, who now sit in darkness and the
shadow of death, are to be reached and
regenerated. At home or far away — the call
is equally instant — here, for want of more
extended physical science, there is plague in
our streets, famine in our fields; the pest
Practical Power of Science 63
strikes root and fruit over a hemisphere of
the earth, we know not why ; the voices of our
children fade away into silence of venomous
death, we know not why; the population
of this most civilized country resists every
effort to lead it into purity of habit and
habitation, — to give it genuineness of nourish-
ment, and wholesomeness of air, as a new
interference with its liberty ; and insists voci-
ferously on its right to helpless death. All
this is terrible; but it is more terrible yet
that dim, phosphorescent, frightful supersti-
tions still hold their own over two-thirds of the
inhabited globe; and that all the phenomena
of nature which were intended by the Creator
to enforce His eternal laws of love and judge-
ment, and which, rightly understood, enforce
them more strongly by their patient benefi-
cence, and their salutary destructiveness, than
the miraculous dew on Gideon* s fleece, or
the restrained lightnings of Horeb — that all
64 Mr. Ruskin's Second Letter
these legends of GocPs daily dealing with His
creatures remain unread, or are read back-
wards, into blind, hundred-armed horror of
idol cosmogony.
( How strange it seems that physical science
should ever have been thought adverse to
religion. The pride of physical science is,
indeed, adverse, like every other pride, both
to religion and to truth ; but sincerity of
science, so far from being hostile, is the path-
maker among the mountains for the feet of
those who publish peace.
( Now, therefore, and now only, it seems to
me, the University has become complete in
her function as a teacher of the youth of
the nation, to which every hour gives wider
authority over distant lands; and from which
every rood of extended dominion demands new,
various, and variously applicable knowledge
of the laws which govern the constitution
of the globe, and must finally regulate the
Noble Scope of the Museum 65
industry, no less than discipline the intellect
of the human race. I can hardly turn my
mind from these deep causes of exultation to
the minor difficulties which beset or restrict
your undertaking. The great work is accom-
plished ; the immediate impression made by it
is of little importance; and as for my own
special subjects of thought or aim, though
many of them are closely involved in what has
been done, and some principles which I believe
to be, in their way, of great importance, are
awkwardly compromised in what has been
imperfectly done, — all these I am tempted to
waive, or content to compromise, when only I
know that the building is in main points fit for
its mighty work. Yet you will not think that
it was matter of indifference to me when I saw,
as I went over Professor Brodie's chemical
laboratories the other day, how closely this
success of adaptation was connected with the
choice of the style. It was very touching and
66 Mr. Ruskiris Second Letter
wonderful to me. Here was the architecture
which I had learned to know and love in
pensive ruins, deserted by the hopes and efforts
of men, or in dismantled fortress-fragments
recording only their cruelty; — here was this
very architecture lending itself, as if created
only for these, to the foremost activities of
human discovery, and the tenderest functions
of human mercy. No other architecture, as I
felt in an instant, could have thus adapted
itself to a new and strange office. No fixed
arrangements of frieze and pillar, nor accepted
proportions of wall and roof, nor practised
refinements of classical decoration, could have
otherwise than absurdly and fantastically
yielded its bed to the crucible, and its blast
to the furnace; but these old vaultings and
strong buttresses — ready always to do service
to man, whatever his bidding — to shake the
waves of war back from his seats of rock, or
prolong through faint twilights of sanctuary,
Gothic adapts itself to all Purposes 67
the sighs of his superstition — he had but to ask
it of them, and they entered at once into the
lowliest ministries of the arts of healing, and
the sternest and clearest offices in the service
of science.
cAnd the longer I examined the Museum
arrangements, the more I felt that it could be
only some accidental delay in the recognition
of this efficiency for its work, which had
caused any feeling adverse to its progress
among the members of the University. The
general idea about the Museum has perhaps
been, hitherto, that it is a forced endeavour
to bring decorative forms of architecture into
uncongenial uses ; whereas, the real fact
is, as far as I can discern it, that no other
architecture would, under the required cir-
cumstances, have been possible; and that any
effort to introduce classical types of form into
these laboratories and museums must have
ended in ludicrous discomfiture. But the
68 Mr. Ruskin's Second Letter
building has nerfr reached a point of crisis,
and it depends upon the treatment which its
rooms now receive in completion, whether the
facts of their propriety and utility be acknow-
ledged by the public, or lost sight of in the
distraction of their attention to matters wholly
external.
' So strongly I feel this, that whatever means
of decoration had been at your disposal, I
should have been inclined to recommend an
exceeding reserve in that matter. Perhaps, I
should even have desired such reserve on
abstract grounds of feeling. The study of
Natural History is one eminently addressed to
the active energies of body and mind. Nothing
is to be got out of it by dreaming, not always
much by thinking — everything by seeking and
seeing. It is work for the hills and fields —
work of foot and hand, knife and hammer — so
far as it is to be afterwards carried on in the
house; the more active and workmanlike our
Gothic Art, Difficult Art 69
proceedings the better, fresh air blowing in
from the windows, and nothing interfering with
the free space for our shelves and instruments
on the walls. I am not sure that much interior
imagery or colour, or other exciting address to
any of the observant faculties, would be desir-
able under such circumstances. You know
best; but I should no more think of painting
in bright colours beside you, while you were
dissecting or analysing, than of entertaining
you by a concert of fifes and cymbals.
6 But farther — do you suppose Gothic decora-
tion is an easy thing, or that it is to be carried
out with a certainty of success at the first trial
under new and difficult conditions? The
system of the Gothic decorations took eight
hundred years to mature, gathering its power
by undivided inheritance of traditional method,
and unbroken accession of systematic power;
from its culminating point in the Sainte
Chapelle, it faded through four hundred years
70 Mr. Ruskin's Second Letter
of splendid decline; now for two centuries it
has lain dead — and more than so — buried ; and
more than so, forgotten, as a dead man out of
mind. Do you expect to revive it out of those
retorts and furnaces of yours, as the cloud-
spirit of the Arabian sea rose from beneath
the seals of Solomon? Perhaps I have been
myself faultfully answerable for this too eager
hope in your mind (as well as in that of
others), by what I have urged so often re-
specting the duty of bringing out the power
of subordinate workmen in decorative design.
But do you think I meant workmen trained
(or untrained) in the way that ours have
been until lately, and then cast loose on
a sudden, into unassisted contention with
unknown elements of style? I meant the
precise contrary of this; I meant workmen
as we have yet to create them : men inheriting
the instincts of their craft through many gen-
erations, rigidly trained in every mechanical
Workmen to be trained 71
art that bears on their materials, and fami-
liarized from infancy with every condition of
their beautiful and perfect treatment ; informed
and refined in manhood, by constant observa-
tion of all natural fact and form ; then classed,
according to their proved capacities, in ordered
companies, in which every man shall know his
part, and take it calmly, and without effort or
doubt — indisputably well — unaccusably accom-
plished— mailed and weaponed cap-a-pie for
his place and function. Can you lay your
hand on such men ? or do you think that
mere natural good-will and good-feeling can
at once supply their place ? Not so — and the
more faithful and earnest the minds you have
to deal with, the more careful you should be
not to urge them towards fields of effort, in
which, too early committed, they can only be
put to unserviceable defeat.
tfNor can you hope to accomplish, by rule
or system, what cannot be done by individual
72 Mr. Ruskin's Second Letter
taste. The laws of colour are definable, up to
certain limits, but they are not yet defined.
So far are they from definition, that the last,
and, on the whole, best work on the subject
(Sir Gardner Wilkinson's) declares the (( colour
concords" of preceding authors to be discords ;
and vice versa.
c Much, therefore, as I love colour decoration
when it is rightly given, and essential as it has
been felt by the great architects of all periods
to the completion of their work, I would not,
in your place, endeavour to carry out such
decoration at present, in any elaborate degree,
in the interior of the Museum. Leave it for
future thought : above all, try no experiments.
Let small drawings be made of the proposed
arrangements of colour in every room; have
them altered on the paper till you feel they are
right ; then carry them out firmly and simply ;
but, observe, with as delicate execution as
possible. Rough work is good in its place,
Economy unfortunate 73
three hundred feet above the eye, on a cathe-
dral front, but not in the interior of rooms,
devoted to studies in which everything de-
pends upon accuracy of touch and keenness
of sight.
6 With respect to this finishing, by the last
touches bestowed on the sculpture of the
building, I feel painfully the harmfulness
of any ill-advised parsimony at this moment.
For it may, perhaps, be alleged by the advo-
cates of retrenchment, that so long as the
building is fit for its uses (and your report
is conclusive as to its being so), economy
in treatment of external feature is perfectly
allowable, and will in no wise diminish the
serviceableness of the building in the great
objects which its designs regarded. To a cer-
tain extent this is true. You have comfortable
rooms, I hope sufficient apparatus ; and it now
depends much more on the professors than
on the ornaments of the building, whether or
74 Mr. Ruskin's Second Letter
not it is to become a bright or obscure centre
of public instruction. Yet there are other
points to be considered. As the building
stands at present, there is a discouraging
aspect of parsimony about it. One sees that
the architect has done the utmost he could
with the means at his disposal, and that just
at the point of reaching what was right, he
has been stopped for want of funds. This
is visible in almost every stone of the edifice.
It separates it with broad distinctiveness from
all the other buildings in the University. It
may be seen at once that our other public
institutions, and all our colleges — though some
of them simply designed — are yet richly built,
never pinchingly. Pieces of princely cost-
liness, every here and there, mingle among
the simplicities or severities of the student's
life. What practical need, for instance, have we
at Christ Church of the beautiful fan-vaulting
under which we ascend to dine? We might
Richness of Work a Sign of Regard 75
have as easily achieved the eminence of our
banquets under a plain vault. What need
have the readers in the Bodleian of the ribbed
traceries which decorate its external walls ?
Yet, which of those readers would not think
that learning was insulted by their removal?
And are there any of the students of Balliol
devoid of gratitude for the kindly munificence
of the man who gave them the beautiful
sculptured brackets of their oriel window,
when three massy projecting stones would have
answered the purpose just as well? In these
and all other regarded and pleasant portions
of our colleges, we find always a wealthy and
worthy completion of all appointed features,
which I believe is not without strong, though
untraced effect, on the minds of the younger
scholars, giving them respect for the branches
of learning which these buildings are intended
to honour, and increasing, in a certain degree,
that sense of the value of delicacy and accuracy
76 Mr. Ruskin's Second Letter
which is the first condition of advance in
those branches of learning themselves.
'Your Museum, if you now bring it to
hurried completion, will convey an impression
directly the reverse of this. It will have the
look of a place, not where a revered system
of instruction is established, but where an un-
advised experiment is being disadvantageously
attempted. It is yet in your power to avoid
this, and to make the edifice as noble in aspect
as in function. Whatever chance there may be
of failure in interior work, rich ornamentation
may be given, without any chance of failure,
to just that portion of the exterior which will
give pleasure to every passer-by, and express
the meaning of the building best to the eyes
of strangers. There is, I repeat, no chance of
serious failure in this external decoration, be-
cause your architect has at his command the
aid of men, such as worked with the architects
of past times. Not only has the art of Gothic
Sculpture our Best Ornament 77
sculpture in part remained, though that of
Gothic colour has been long lost, but the
unselfish — and I regret to say, in part self-
sacrificing — zeal of two first-rate sculptors,
Mr. Munro and Mr. Woolner, which has
already given you a series of noble statues,
is still at your disposal to head and systematize
the efforts of inferior workmen.
( I do not know if you will attribute it to a
higher estimate than yours of the genius of
the O'Shea family, or to a lower estimate of
what they have as yet accomplished, that I
believe they will, as they proceed, produce
much better ornamental sculpture than any at
present completed in the Museum. It is also
to be remembered that sculptors are able to
work for us with a directness of meaning which
none of our painters could bring to their task,
even were they disposed to help us. A painter
is scarcely excited to his strength, but by
subjects full of circumstance, such as it would
H
78 Mr. Ruskin's Second Letter
be difficult to suggest appropriately in the pre-
sent building ; but a sculptor has room enough
for his full power, in the portrait statues,
which are necessarily the leading features
of good Gothic decoration. Let me pray
you, therefore, so far as you have influence
with the Delegacy, to entreat their favourable
consideration of the project stated in Mr.
GresswelPs appeal — the enrichment of the
doorway, and the completion of the sculpture
of the West Front. There is a reason for
desiring such a plan to be carried out, of wider
reach than any bearing on the interests of the
Museum itself. I believe that the elevation
of all arts in England to their true dignity,
depends principally on our recovering that
unity of purpose in sculptors and architects,
which characterized the designers of all great
Christian buildings. Sculpture, separated from
architecture, always degenerates into effemin-
acies and conceits; architecture, stripped of
Commemorative Statues 79
sculpture, is at best a convenient arrangement
of dead walls ; associated, they not only adorn,
but reciprocally exalt each other, and give to
all the arts of the country in which they thus
exist, a correspondent tone of majesty.
6 But I would plead for the enrichment of this
doorway by portrait sculpture, not so much
even on any of these important grounds, as
because it would be the first example in
modern English architecture of the real value
and right place of commemorative statues.
We seem never to know at present where to
put such statues. In the midst of the blighted
trees of desolate squares, or at the crossings of
confused streets, or balanced on the pinnacles
of pillars, or riding across the tops of triumphal
arches, or blocking up the aisles of cathedrals,
in none of these positions, I think, does the
portrait statue answer its purpose. It may be
a question whether the erection of such statues
is honourable to the erectors, but assuredly it is
H 2
80 Mr. Ruskin's Second Letter
not honourable to the persons whom it pretends
to commemorate; nor is it anywise matter of
exultation to a man who has deserved well of
his country, to reflect that his effigy may one
day encumber a crossing, or disfigure a park
gate. But there is no man of worth or heart,
who would not feel it a high and priceless
reward that his statue should be placed where
it might remind the youth of England of what
had been exemplary in his life, or useful in his
labours, and might be regarded with no empty
reverence, no fruitless pensiveness, but with
the emulative, eager, unstinted passionateness
of honour, which youth pays to the dead leaders
of the cause it loves, or discoverers of the light
by which it lives. To be buried under weight
of marble, or with splendour of ceremonial, is
still no more than burial; but to be remem-
bered daily, with profitable tenderness, by the
activest intelligences of the nation we have
served, and to have power granted even to the
Portraiture of Animals and Plants 81
shadows of the poor features,, sunk into dust,
still to warn,, to animate, to command, as the
father's brow rules and exalts the toil of his
children. This is not burial, but immor-
tality.
' There is, however, another kind of portrai-
ture, already richly introduced in the works of
the Museum ; the portraiture, namely, of flowers
and animals, respecting which I must ask you
to let me say a few selfish, no less than congra-
tulatory words — selfish, inasmuch as they bear
on this visible exposition of a principle which
it has long been one of my most earnest aims
to maintain. We English call ourselves a prac-
tical people; but, nevertheless, there are some
of our best and most general instincts which
it takes us half-centuries to put into practice.
Probably no educated Englishman or English-
woman has ever, for the last forty years,
visited Scotland, with leisure on their hands,
without making a pilgrimage to Melrose ; nor
82 Mr. Ruskin's Second Letter
have they ever, I suppose, accomplished the
pilgrimage without singing to themselves the
burden of Scott's description of the Abbey.
Nor in that description (may it not also be
conjectured ?) do they usually feel any couplets
more deeply than the —
" Spreading herbs and flowerets bright
Glistened with the dew of night.
No herb nor floweret glistened there,
But was carved in the cloister arches as fair."
And yet, though we are raising every year in
England new examples of every kind of costly
and variously intended buildings — ecclesias-
tical, civil, and domestic — none of us, through
all that period, had boldness enough to put
the pretty couplets into simple practice. We
went on, even in the best Gothic work we
attempted, clumsily copying the rudest orna-
ments of previous buildings; we never so
much as dreamed of learning from the monks
of Melrose, and seeking for help beneath the
Monks of Melrose 83
dew that sparkled on their " gude kail "
garden 3.
' Your Museum at Oxford is literally the first
building raised in England since the close of
the fifteenth century, which has fearlessly put
to new trial this old faith in nature, and in the
genius of the unassisted workman, who gathered
out of nature the materials he needed. I am
entirely glad, therefore, that you have decided
on engraving for publication one of O'Shea's
capitals2; it will be a complete type of the
whole work, in its inner meaning, and far better
to show one of them in its completeness, than
to give any reduced sketch of the building.
1 'The monks of Melrose made good kail
On Friday, when they fasted.'
The kail leaf is the one principally employed in the
decorations of the abbey.
2 See vignette Frontispiece. The capital represents the
following ferns : —
Scolopendrium vulgare,
Blechnum boreale,
Filix mas.
84 Mr. Ruskiris Second Letter
Nevertheless, beautiful as that capital is, and
as all the rest of O'Shea's work is likely to
be, it is not yet perfect Gothic sculpture ; and
it might give rise to dangerous error, if the
admiration given to these carvings were un-
qualified.
6 1 cannot, of course, enter in this letter into
any discussion of the question, more and more
vexed among us daily, respecting the due
meaning and scope of conventionalism in treat-
ment of natural form ; but I may state briefly
what, I trust, will be the conclusion to which
all this " vexing " will at last lead our best
architects.
' The highest art in all kinds is that which
conveys the most truth, and the best ornamen-
tation possible would be the painting of interior
walls with frescoes by Titian, representing per-
fect Humanity in colour ; and the sculpture of
exterior walls by Phidias, representing perfect
Humanity in form. Titian and Phidias are
Naturalism and Conventionalism 85
precisely alike in their conception and treat-
ment of nature — everlasting standards of the
right.
'Beneath ornamentation, such as men like
these could bestow, falls in various rank, ac-
cording to its subordination to vulgar uses or
inferior places, what is commonly conceived as
ornamental art. The lower its office, and the
less tractable its material, the less of nature it
should contain, until a zig-zag becomes the best
ornament for the hem of a robe, and a mosaic
of bits of glass the best design for a coloured
window. But all these forms of lower art are
to be conventional only because they are
subordinate: — not because conventionalism is
in itself a good or desirable thing. All right
conventionalism is a wise acceptance of, and
compliance with, conditions of restraint or in-
feriority;— it may be inferiority of our know-
ledge or power — as in the art of a semi-savage
nation; or restraint by reason of material — as
86 Mr. Ruskirfs Second Letter
in the way the glass-painter should restrict
himself to transparent hue, and a sculptor
deny himself the eyelash and the film of flow-
ing hair, which he cannot cut in marble; —
but in all cases whatever, right convention-
alism is either a wise acceptance of an inferior
place, or a noble display of power under ac-
cepted limitation : it is not an improvement of
natural form into something better or purer
than Nature herself.
' Now this great and most precious principle
may be compromised in two quite opposite
ways. It is compromised on one side, when
men suppose that the degradation of a natural
form which fits it for some subordinate place
is an improvement of it; and that a black
profile on a red ground, because it is proper
on a water-jug, is therefore an idealization of
Humanity, and nobler art than a picture of
Titian. And it is compromised equally gravely
on the opposite side, when men refuse to submit
Gothic Revival still incomplete 87
to the limitation of material and the fitnesses
of office ; when they try to produce finished
pictures in coloured glass, or substitute the in-
considerate imitation of natural objects for the
perfectness of adapted and disciplined design.
6 There is a tendency in the work of the
Oxford Museum to err on this last side ; un-
avoidable, indeed, in the present state of our
art-knowledge — and less to be regretted in a
building devoted to natural science than in any
other: nevertheless, I cannot close this letter
without pointing it out, and warning the general
reader against supposing that the ornamentation
of the Museum is, or can be as yet, a repre-
sentation of what Gothic work will be, when its
revival is complete. Far more severe, yet more
perfect and lovely, that work will involve,
under sterner conventional restraint, the ex-
pression not only of natural form, but of all
vital and noble natural law. For the truth of
decoration is never to be measured by its
88 Mr. Rtt skin's Second Letter
imitative power, but by its suggestive and infor-
mative power. In the annexed spandrel of the
iron-work of our roof, for instance, the horse-
chesnut leaf and nut are used as the principal
elements of form : they are not ill-arranged,
and produce a more agreeable effect than con-
volutions of the iron could have given, unhelped
by any reference to natural objects. Neverthe-
less, I do not call it an absolutely good design ;
for it would have been possible, with far severer
conventional treatment of the iron bars, and
stronger constructive arrangement of them, to
have given vigorous expression, not of the shapes
of leaves and nuts only, but of their peculiar
radiant or fanned expansion, and other condi-
tions of group and growth in the tree; which
would have been just the more beautiful and
interesting, as they would have arisen from
deeper research into nature, and more adaptive
modifying power in the designer's mind, than
the mere leaf termination of a rivetted scroll.
Iron Spandrel
89
go Mr. Ruskin's Second Letter
( I am compelled to name these deficiencies, in
order to prevent misconception of the principles
we are endeavouring to enforce; but I do not
name them as at present to be avoided, or even
much to be regretted. They are not chargeable
. either on the architect, or on the subordinate
workmen ; but only on the system which has for
three centuries withheld all of us from healthy
study; and although I doubt not that lovelier
and juster expressions of the Gothic principle
will be ultimately arrived at by us, than any
which are possible in the Oxford Museum, its
builders will never lose their claim to our chief
gratitude, as the first guides in a right direc-
tion ; and the building itself — the first exponent
of the recovered truth — will only be the more
• venerated the more it is excelled.
( Believe me, my dear Acland,
'Ever affectionately yours,
tfj. RUSKIN.'
Letter from Professor Phillips 91
After the perusal of these remarks, any
further commentary would but divert the
spectator from his own critical examination.
Especially do I wish the last paragraph to
be duly weighed; in the sense which is there
expressed do I heartily commend the work
of our architect to your favourable considera-
tion. It remains to add only to these pages
the following explanatory letter which Pro-
fessor Phillips has enabled and permitted me
to print.
' OXFOBD, Jan. 21, 1859.
f MY DEAR ACLAND,
c I lose no time in stating very concisely
the purpose we had in view, when it was pro-
posed to place shafts of British marbles in the
corridors of the Museum, and to crown them
with capitals of natural objects. A few words
are appended to show in what degree we are
able to effect the object, and the method on
which we proceed.
92 Letter from Professor Phillips
' The British marbles are still only partially
known. Including in the term marbles some-
thing more than the "marmora" of our early
mineralogists, and including granitic rocks,
serpentines, &c., we desired to obtain specimens
of all the more important kinds — important
on grounds of scientific interest, as well as
for their commercial value and architectural
utility. Here and there our efforts failed ; we
could not "for love or money " get the stone
we wanted; but on the whole our success is
much beyond any previous example in this,
and, I believe, in any country.
'In the arrangement of the many valuable
and curious examples of polishable stones,
which the liberality of our friends has enabled
us to bring together, we have always desired
to employ so much of system as to make
these ornamental parts of the fabric really and
obviously useful, as a part of the exhibition
of natural objects. Regarding the rocks as
Arrangements of Shafts 93
of aqueous or igneous origin, and of unequal
geological date, we wished to exhibit these
relations in our building, by giving to each
group an appropriate place. It was found,
after great efforts, possible to accomplish this
to a considerable extent, but not quite so
perfectly as was hoped. The principal reason
is that we could not obtain certain marbles
known 150 and more years since, to complete
our series of mesozoic limestones.
'If now* you will stand in the centre of
the great court, and turn your eyes to the
west, soils ad occasum, you will see, in the
lower range of shafts, six fine examples of
granite and its twin-brother syenite. First,
on the left, Aberdeen gray granite, sur-
mounted by the sculptured capital of Alis-
maceous plants; next, Aberdeen red granite,
crowned by the Butomaceae; then the largely
porphyritic gray granite of Lamorna, with a
capital of the date-palm. On the other side
i
94 Letter from Professor Phillips
of the entrance, stands my special column of
syenite from Charnwood Forest, with the
cocoa-palm for its crown; then the beautiful
mottled granite of Cruachan, elaborated for us
by the Marquis of Breadalbane, the capital
being Pontederaceae ; and finally, the red
granite of Ross in Mull, the gift of the
Duke of Argyle, whose capital is Liliaceous.
6 1 don't at all intend to lead you so slowly
round the remainder of the quadrangle. On
the north you see eight shafts, all from Ireland
or Devonshire, all belonging to palaeozoic,
stratified, or metamorphic rocks. At the
extreme are the beautiful marbles of Torquay
and Mary church — between them the green
serpentinous marbles of Galway, and red and
black-tinted limestones of Cork, Limerick, &c.
The capitals will be Acotyledonous — (see the
splendid fern sculpture above Marychurch
shaft) — or Monocotyledonous, as Gramineae,
Acoracese, &c.
Arrangements of Shafts 95
c Now turn to the east, and behold a second
set of igneous and metamorphic rocks, to face
the old granites and porphyries. Here, on
the left (next to Marychurch column) you see
your own Killerton rock (ancient — how
ancient!) lava, crowned with Zamiaceae, from
which peeps the Didelphys ; next the Rock of
Trerice, its capital will be a thorny Zamia ;
then Roche gives a shaft to be capped by
Cupressinae ; next are two serpentines with
capitals of Abietinae and Araucarinse ; Inverara
porphyry follows, and supports sculptured
branches of Taxaceae. St. Leven's porphyry
and black serpentine complete this series, and
are to bear on their heads plants of the orders
Smilaceae and Dioscoraceae.
*On the south, you have a beautiful and
pretty well-known series of English and Welsh
marbles, mostly of the carboniferous limestone,
but including what are less commonly seen,
the breccia of Mendip and the gypsum of
I 2
96 Letter from Professor Phillips
Chellaston. The plants destined to furnish
capitals for these are the Monocotyledonous
orders, as Orchidaeese, Musacese, Iridaceae, &c.
'Thus have we thirty shafts of the larger
size placed, with their thirty capitals executed
or planned. Besides the thirty capitals we
have to provide sixty corbels, and are doing
this so as to add to each capital a neighbour
bearing some natural affinity to it. Only in
one instance has this been departed from; it
is in the corbel of the Malvaceae, close by the
Filices — a case of two quite different groups
wonderfully executed, and looking at each
other with mutual admiration !
'Now, ascend to the upper corridor, and
survey the smaller shafts, to the number of
ninety-six, which appear on its four sides.
As yet no capitals are carved on them.
Beginning on the west side, and following the
same order as for the shafts below, you find
the whole corridor (twenty-four shafts) occupied
Arrangements of Shafts 97
by granite,, porphyry, serpentine, &c. Among
them are granites of Aberdeen, Criffel, and
Cornwall — porphyritic granites of remarkable
richness (often called porphyry), el vans, por-
phyries, and various quartzose compounds.
'The capitals for these shafts will be all
selected from the Corolliflorous division of
Dicotyledonous plants.
'The northern upper corridor is wholly
filled with marbles from the carboniferous
limestone and older rocks of Ireland, including
the serpentine of Galway. The capitals
will exemplify Monochlamydeous plants and
Rhizanths.
'On the western side the series of shafts is
varied. It was not found possible to obtain
for this side all the marbles formerly known
and used in the Oolitic and Wealden districts
of England; and some of the bays have been
filled with other rocks which it was desirable
to exhibit. At the extremities we have from
98 Letter from Professor Phillips
Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Somerset-
shire, specimens of the Permian limestones,
triassic breccia, and gypsum — in the centre are
granites of Jersey and Cornwall — flanked by
columns of slate and shafts of lias, blue and
white; marbles of Purbeck, Stamford, and
Buckingham.
( The capitals of these shafts will be
designed from the Thalamiflorous division
of the Dicotyledonous plants.
6 Lastly, on the south side is a series of the
finest rocks belonging to the carboniferous and
Devonian limestones of England and Wales,
including the crinoidal marble of Dent (the
birthplace of Sedgwick, who gives the shaft),
the various marbles of Durham, Derbyshire,
Plymouth, Torquay, Anglesea, and South
Wales. It will be interesting to compare these
with the coeval rocks of Ireland, which stand
opposite to them. The capitals of these will
be ornamented by Calyciflorous Dicotyledons.
Science and Art combined 99
' Thus, as far as possible, the representations
of plants (varied here and there by animals
geographically and naturally associated with
them), will be placed, with so much of system
as to help the memory, and will be sculptured
with so much attention to their natural habit,
as to satisfy the botanist as well as the artist,
neither of whom can expect the most skilful
human hand to express in rough stone, by
means of hard steel, all the delicacy and grace
which, with finer materials and by finer pro-
cesses, the GREAT ARTIFICER moulds the lilies
of the field and the leaves of the forest.
c I need not remind you that with this view of
the utility and meaning of the arrangement of
our subjects, the architects (who have been very
zealous in their efforts to make the whole suc-
cessful) have been always able to combine what
is due to the building as a work of art ; nor am
I aware that their opinions and ours have been
in the least degree difficult to reconcile. We
ioo Letter from Professor Phillips
must not forget the sculptors, who have worked
with singular zeal and ability. Finally, this
is not a haphazard collection of pretty stones
crowned by pretty flowers, but a selection of
marbles and sculptures, intended to illustrate
points of some interest and importance in
science and art. Upon the whole, you will
probably not regret to have given so much
time and attention to this matter; all that is
told me confirms my own opinion that it was
well worth while to make this trial to combine
grace with utility, and that the result will not
be disappointing to those who have given us
money for our work, and, what is more pre-
cious, their full confidence that we should use
it with liberality and prudence.
'Ever yours truly,
cJoHN PHILLIPS/
These pages have attempted to illustrate
the general scope of the Museum — its aims
The End 101
in Art — its purpose as an Educational institu-
tion. Ere long it is to be hoped that the
building will be thought of but as a frame
made by a skilful Artist — a frame in which
to set the records of that Art which is
wrought without hands.
NOTES
I. STATUES ALREADY GIVEN.
ANCIENTS.
Aristotle. Euclid.
Hippocrates.
MODERNS.
Bacon. Priestley.
Davy.
Leibnitz.
Linnaeus.
Newton.
Galileo.
Sydenham.
Oersted. Hunter.
Watt.
Stephenson.
His Royal Highness The Prince Consort.
There remain therefore eighteen corbels
awaiting the gifts of statues of the great men,
whether ancient or modern, who have ad-
vanced the knowledge and inspired the grati-
tude and respect of mankind. The University
will surely hail with satisfaction the gradual
Statues already given 103
completion of these incentives to lives of
thought^ more numerous as each decennium
quickly passes by.
In regard to medicine, the last of the list,
it may be remarked that the great Practitioner
Sydenham stands between the Physiologist
and the investigator of the whole range of
Biology, — Anatomical, Physiological, Patho-
logical ; that these three Moderns are supported
on either side by the Ancients, Hippocrates
and Aristotle, the latter being succeeded in the
series by Bacon. The Student enters the Court
between Aristotle and Bacon.
It has long been hoped that corbels would
have been occupied by at least the following in
their several departments.
Hipparchus. Cuvier.
Archimedes. Darwin.
Eobert Boyle. Galen.
Lavoisier. Haller.
Faraday. Boerhaave.
104 On the Irish Workmen
Even so, very many names immortal for their
work and their example would be absent from
us. Medicine, for instance, the most complex
and most difficult of all the natural sciences,
is typically, but quite inadequately, represented.
Will no Physicist have rendered into stone the
fine statue in plaster of paris of Oersted,
generously presented after much trouble and
expense by Herr Jacobsen of Copenhagen ?
Will no Chemist erect Lavoisier or Fara-
day ? nor Biologist Cuvier or Darwin ? nor
Astronomer one of the Herschels ?
II. ON THE IRISH WORKMEN.
A few words may here be acceptable con-
cerning the relations of the workmen to the
Museum during its erection.
The first step taken after the foundation
stone was laid by the Earl of Derby, was to
erect on the adjoining ground, the future
Parks, a simple dining-room, smoking-room,
On the Irish Workmen 105
kitchen and reading-room: with a caretaker.
It was ascertained that less than this arrange-
ment would be unacceptable and inadequate.
All the rooms were fully used. Dr. Cotton of
Worcester College, undertook to arrange for
a very short service akin to Family Prayers
just at the breakfast hour. Many of the men
being strangers had only a sleeping room in
the town, and this building was their home.
Sir Thomas Deane and Mr. Woodward had
experience of Irish workmen in building the
Trinity College Museum in Dublin. They
knew well the inventive character and artistic
nature of their brethren of the Green Island,
inherited from the earliest years wherein we
have record of the Irish saints by whom Britain
was taught and Christianized.
Some of the workmen came over with the
Architects whose motto had been Nisi Dominus
aedificaverit domum. The strongest of these
men were of the family of O'Shea.
Mr. Fergusson, who had more of architec-
io6 On the Irish Workmen
tural learning than of humour, or of mediaeval
instinct, was specially indignant at some of
the carvings done by these men. These were
often as beautiful in design as in execution
— though they would occasionally be as
grotesque as the typical gurgoyle. One had
sometimes to say to Mr. Woodward, c Oh !
why did you not all stop back in the twelfth
or thirteenth century, your proper place, and
not drop down to invade us prosaic folk here/
But in vain. Art and humour were inborn.
Woodward sent ten letters in his own hand-
writing to one workman concerning the carving
of one of the windows of the Front.
It had been intended from the first that all
decoration should illustrate the Kosmos, as
religious histories or allusions for the most
part are represented in ecclesiastical edifices.
The workmea generally made the designs for
places and objects appointed to them by the
Architect.
The upper windows in the Front were to
On the Irish Workmen 107
illustrate some part of the Fauna and Flora
of our planet; the windows on the South
of the Front the vertebrate classes, — Man,
Quadrumana, Carnivora.
The second window was first begun by
order of the Architect, but, probably, not by
that of the Delegates, it being long vacation.
O'Shea rushed into my house one afternoon,
and — in a state of wild excitement — related as
follows.
f " The Master of the University," cried he,
" found me on my scaffold just now." " What
are you at ? " says he. u Monkeys," says I.
" Come down directly," says he ; " you shall
not destroy the property of the University."
"I work as Mr. Woodward orders me." 'f Come
down directly," says he; "come down."3
< What shall I do ? ' said O'Shea to me. ' I
don't know ; Mr. Woodward told you monkeys,
the Master tells you no monkeys. I don't know
what you are to do.' He instantly rushed out
as he came, without another word.
io8 On the Irish Workmen
The next day I went to see what had
happened. O'Shea was hammering furiously
at the window. 'What are you at?' said I.
'Cats/ says he. 'The Master came along,
and says, " You are doing monkeys when I
told you not/5 " To-day its cats," says I. The
Master was terrified and went away.3
It is quite intelligible that this old century
proceeding peculiar to Gothic and Irish art
was puzzling to Mr. Fergusson's regulated
mind. It did not however so end; Shea was
dismissed. I went to wish him good-bye with
mixed and perplexed feelings.
I found Shea on a single ladder in the porch,
wielding heavy blows such as one imagines the
genius of Michael Angelo might have struck
when he was first blocking out the design of
some immortal work. 'What are you doing,
Shea? I thought you were gone, and Mr.
Woodward has given no design for the long
moulding in the hard green stone/
Striking on still, Shea shouted,
On the Irish Workmen 109
' Parrhots and Owwls !
Parrhots and Owwls !
Members of Convocation ! *
There they were, blocked out alternately.
What could I do ? 'Well/ 1 said, meditatively,
' Shea, you must knock their heads off.'
e Never,' says he.
6 Directly/ said I.
Their heads went. Their bodies, not yet
evolved, remain to testify to the humour, the
force, the woes, the troubles, in the character
and art of our Irish brethren — much to love,
much to direct, much to lament.
If some of my sterner brethren, for whom,
after its kind, this enthusiasm laboured, think
this matter too trifling for their graver life,
they may reflect that when once the building
was ready for them and their weighty work, the
aesthetic hammer was wielded no more. Out
of four hundred Capitals and Bases, about one
hundred only are carved. One delicately exe-
cuted window is from a design by Mr. Ruskin.
K
no Contributors to the Sculpture
III. CONTRIBUTORS TO THE
SCULPTURE.
Before the occupation of the Museum, gifts
either of Statues, of Shafts, or of money for
them, were made by more than one hundred
and fifty friends of the work.
Her Most Gracious Majesty presented five
Statues, including Francis Bacon,
The Citizens gave a Statue of the Prince
Consort.
The Undergraduates gave one of Aristotle.
Shafts, Capitals and Carving for the Win-
dows were given by persons so various that I
venture to record a few.
The Duke of Argyll.
Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone.
Dr. Pusey.
Seven Heads of Colleges.
The Earl of Derby.
Sir Charles Lyell.
The Kev. Professor Sedgwick.
Sir Robert Murchison.
Contributors to the Sculpture in
Mr. Godfrey Lushington.
Dean Liddell.
Dean Church.
The Chaplains of Ch. Ch.
Sir Benjamin Brodie
(President Koyal Society).
Gilbert Scott.
Dean Buckland.
Rev. Dr. Jacobson
(afterwards Bishop of Chester).
Professor Beale.
O'Shea.
P. Lutley Sclater.
The Earl of Harrowby.
Sir Stephen Glyn.
IV. MR. WOODWARD.
Mr. WOODWARD did not live to see the
Museum occupied. Delicate always, he became
consumptive. In 1859 ne wen^ f°r the winter
to Algiers. He was taken ill on his way
home, and died, after a few hours of violent
haemorrhage from the lungs, alone in an Inn
at Lyons. How great a loss to Art, and to
H2 Mr. Woodward
those who knew the loveable nature that lay
hid beneath his courteous silence,, cannot be
told. Stranger though he comparatively was,
we had arranged special rooms in the house
adjoining, breaking a door through to our own,
that he might pass away in due time, cared
for, in peace to the end, after his return. A
memoir of his opinions on the nature of Art
in Architecture, and on the character of the
Artist, was to be written by one in Oxford,
who also, alas ! passed away before it was
accomplished. No other could take it up.
Alexander Munro made a medallion worthy
alike of the most accomplished sculptor who
also died in his prime abroad, and of our
common friend. It may be studied in the
Radcliffe Library at the Museum, both as
a work of Art, and as the expressive record
of a guileless contemplative nature.
THE END
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